


Three Pieces of Advice

by Josselin



Series: Three Pieces of Advice [1]
Category: Captive Prince - S. U. Pacat
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:57:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 23,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1614125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josselin/pseuds/Josselin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Damianos," Theomedes said. "Peace is for the days of old men and babes. You are going to a peace summit, but you are a young man; your thoughts should be of war."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“My lords,” the head royal physician murmured. “It is time to say your farewells.”

Damen, the crown prince of Akielos, and his half-brother, Kastor, sat in the antechamber to the king’s bedroom. The bedroom was filled with their father’s sickbed and his attending physicians. The antechamber contained the two brothers and a musician playing soft chords on a kithara. Damen had been about to speak with the musician about his choice of composition when the physician spoke. Damen rose instead. Kastor stood beside him a second later.

They entered the bedroom. A breeze floated in from the balcony to the west that overlooked the cliffs, but yet still the room stank of sickness. Two other physicians consulted with each other in whispers in the corner far from the door. 

The head physician that had fetched them nodded toward the bed.

Damen approached his father and sank to his knees next to the bed, taking his father’s hand. Kastor went to the other side of the bed and followed his example.

Theomedes opened his eyes slowly, looking from Damen to Kastor without moving his head. He was a man who did not yet have grandchildren, and yet he seemed very old, and very frail. The illness had given his skin a yellow pallor, and had taken from him the weight and muscle that had marked the strong man of his youth and middle age.

“My sons,” he said. “I have important things to tell you.”

“You must rest,” said Kastor. 

Theomedes interrupted him. “Damianos. Peace is for the days of old men and babes.” Theomedes cleared his throat. “You are going to a peace summit, but you are a young man; your thoughts should be of war.

“As you travel, you must remember these three things. First, do not trust a Veretian. Their words are the webs of spiders, flimsy and interwoven and easily brushed away. Second, make no concessions in the name of peace that would weaken you in a time of war. You are a fine commander and a stronger fighter; do not let these attributes be stolen from you by a false peace accord.” 

Theomedes coughed, suddenly, and one of the physicians rushed over to the bed with a cup, and helped Theomedes to sip it, gently.

“Finally,” Theomedes concluded, his eyes still on Damen, “You are of an age to be married. Nothing builds the spirit of the men on the field like an heir on the way in the keep. Take a bride.” Theomedes closed his eyes slowly, and Damen wondered if that was the last of it, but then Theomedes opened them again. “Do you understand, Damianos?”

“Yes, Father,” said Damen. “Of course.” It was nothing different than what his father had told him on many occasions prior.

“Kastor,” Theomedes continued. “Your lot in life is a hard one, but chance assigns us each our roles. You must love your brother. You must be his staunchest advocate, his wisest counselor, his tempered comforter. You must be the teacher of his sons and the guarder of his keeps. He has looked to you since he had the strength to raise his head. You have years and wisdom that must be used to guide him. Do you understand, Kastor?”

Kastor’s eyes were on the bed, where his own hand clasped his father’s frail one. He murmured something quietly that Damen could not make out.

“I love you both,” Theomedes said, and the strength of his voice was waning. “Everything I have done has been for you, and for Akielos.”

 

There was no time for both the funeral and a coronation before Damen had to leave for the summit, so Damen rode out as the uncrowned king, the ruler in all but name. 

The season was good and the weather amenable to travel. The ship docked in Sicyon. Nikandros greeted Damen with the men who would make up the rest of the Akielon delegation. They saluted him as they would a king, not a prince, and Damen resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder for his father.

Damen walked along the lines and found the men to his liking. Their straight posture, precise lines, and careful armor spoke of a disciplined commander who paid attention to detail. He told Nikandros as much; Nikandros inclined his head in thanks.

The summit was to be held near Marlas; the Veretian camp was rumored to be made of cloth of gold woven with jewels. Each of the delegates were to camp on either side of a valley.

The night before they arrived in their location, they camped near Trikala. 

Nikandros familiarized him with the geography of the area near Marlas in his tent. The map spread across a long table in Damen’s tent that took up more space than his bedroll. He and Nikandros discussed the advantages of various positions and moved small carved wooden horses and soldiers on the map.

Kastor sat with them, but his attention seemed more occupied by Damen’s bedslave Lykaios than by the tactical planning. 

Lykaios unbuckled Damen’s armor and made the caress of her hand along his upper arm an invitation.

Damen shook his head at her and asked Nikandros another question about how the horses would handle the terrain. 

Nikandros watched Lykaios retreat across the tent. “Perhaps your highness requires diversion,” he suggested, signaling Lykaios with a finger that his goblet was empty. “Toil of the mind in the evening is not fruitful. You are young. Join the men and the women who have come from Trikala.” Lykaios poured wine from a jug into Nikandros’s goblet, and he thanked her, which caused her to blush slightly.

“You know the Veretians do not liaise with members of the opposite sex to whom they are not married?” Nikandros asked Damen.

“Yes.” Damen had been told as much by Guion, the ambassador from Vere.

“We will meet again in the morning,” Nikandros said. Damen saw a glimpse of the night sky through the tent flap as Nikandros exited. 

Kastor, having pulled Lykaios half into his lap, raised an eyebrow at Damen, requesting permission. Damen nodded, and Kastor retreated back to his own tent, Lykaios a step behind him.

Damen left his own goblet half empty in the tent, and followed the sounds of laughter and sex through the camp to the fringes. 

He walked past one of his captains in the process of stepping in to a shadowed tent with a smiling woman. The captain paused to ask Damen if he needed anything. Damen dismissed him with a small shake of his head.

He moved through the camp, nodded at the men on watch who saluted sharply upon seeing him, and took in the sky across the plains, and how it was different from the sky across the ocean, and yet in other respects it was identical. The moon traveled between the lioness and the hunter while he walked. When he returned, the watch saluted again and the remainder of the camp was mostly quiet, sleeping or retreated into the tents.

Damen was passing one of the tents on the fringes when he heard the angry voice of a woman. “You are drunk,” she said. He took two steps backwards and entered the tent where he heard the voices. 

Two women and one man occupied the small tent. One of the women was matronly and had her finger upraised and was lecturing the man. The man indeed had the slightly listing posture of one drunk. The second woman was wearing a disrupted veil and was straightening it. Damen’s entrance captured all of their attention. 

The second woman had strands of golden hair escaping her veil and remarkable light eyes, they caught the light of the torch.

“What’s going on?” said Damen, his tone mild.

“Your highness,” the man slurred. The veiled woman turned to look at Damen more closely as the man attempted to salute.

The first woman was the one who spoke. “This man is drunk,” she pointed at the drunken soldier, “And this woman does not desire his attentions.” She concluded by pointing at the veiled woman.

Damen regarded the second woman’s eyes again, her face besides the eyes was obscured by the veil. “Is that so?” 

“It’s not like that,” the man said, and then hiccuped, “she broke my hand!” He held up his disfigured hand as evidence.

“She doesn’t speak Akielon--” the first woman said.

“She attacked me!” the man insisted.

“—but I don’t need to speak her language to know that a woman who breaks the hand of a man who touches her doesn’t want to be touched.”

“She—“ the man started, but Damen cut him off with a raised hand.

“Report to the officer on watch,” he told the man. “Drunkenness is unbecoming. A broken hand is a mild punishment in comparison to what you would receive for rape.”

Damen stood in the doorway of the tent and watched the man’s slightly stumbling path through the camp reporting to the officer. Behind him the older woman was fussing over the veiled one. The veiled woman brushed away the older’s concern, pinning her veil more securely.

Damen turned back to the women. “Are you all right?” 

“She doesn’t speak Akielon,” the older woman said.

Damen repeated himself in Veretian.

The veiled woman looked quickly back at him when he spoke Veretian. Their gaze held each other for a moment, and then she nodded. Damen nodded back, slowly. Her hair was under her veil, now, strands of golden yellow no longer visible. Damen wondered at its length. 

The veiled woman took a step toward him; she seemed focused on the brooch on his tunic. It had been his father’s. 

“Do you need a place to go?” said Damen, still speaking Veretian, wondering if it were desperation that brought a foreign woman to the Akielon camp.

She shook her head, but took a step closer to him in the tent. She was standing very close to Damen, now. She was close enough that he could see the individual threads of the fabric of her veil. The veil seemed like just another shadow in the torch-lit tent. The veiled woman reached out a hand and touched his brooch, running her longest finger over the ruby that decorated the lion’s eye. 

The older woman was watching the pair of them closely.

Damen had thought himself too distracted, on the eve of war, to amuse himself with a lover. It had been part of his thinking earlier when he dismissed Lykaios. There was something about this woman’s eyes that was drawing his attention.

He raised one of his own hands, slowly, and cupped the hand the woman had on his chest, removing her hand from where it caressed his tunic and enclosing it delicately within his own hand. 

Damen spoke, and his voice was deeper than it had been a moment before. “Will you accompany me back to my tent?” He punctuated his question by running his thumb across the back of the woman’s hand.

She gazed at him for a moment. She was tall for a woman, but not as tall as he was, and had to look up to meet his eyes with her own. After a long moment she nodded. He raised her hand to his lips and pressed his lips against the back of her palm.

The older woman cleared her throat suddenly, and Damen turned his attention back her direction, feeling oddly as though he were seeking her blessing. She nodded at him, and Damen led the veiled woman out of the tent and across the camp toward his own tent. 

She looked around, taking in the size of his tent, the obstacle of the table full of maps and war pieces between the two of them and his bedroll. 

“Can I offer you some refreshment?” Damen glanced himself around the tent for where Lykaios would have left the jug of wine and the goblets from earlier in the evening. He spotted them finally in the corner, and turned back to the woman only to find that she was much closer than he had realized, and she pressed him back on to his bedroll.

Damen was accustomed to setting the tempo of his own romantic entanglements. Those he bedded tended to wait for his invitation, to follow his lead, and to demur to his interests. He had half formed ideas about the woman he had met earlier this night. 

He wanted to know her. He wanted her to speak to him -- in Akielon or Veretian it made no difference. He wanted to know where she was from and how she came to be here. He wanted to see her. He had caught a glimpse of her hair when he had first come upon her with the veil disarranged, and he wished to uncover her hair and stroke it softly. He wanted to admire the color of the golden strands in the light cast by the embers of the fire and continue to admire it as the light of the early dawn approached. 

He enjoyed pleasuring his lovers, bringing them to the peak of enjoyment and watching them crest over the edge. He liked when they were so focused on their own pleasure that they almost forgot that he was there, and he got to see that secret joy and abandonment on their faces. He enjoyed taking his time, and saw no reason to be rushed.

The woman seemed to have other ideas. Damen knew almost nothing about her, knew almost nothing of her besides her eyes, and yet she seemed to know him intimately. She pressed him down on his pallet with hands on his shoulders and followed him down, ending up settled next to him in a pool of skirts. 

Damen curled up his upper body and extended an arm toward her, wanting to pull her toward him, but she leaned her upper body back away from him, and shook her head. He paused, hesitating awkwardly poised somewhere between prone and seated. 

Her head tilted slightly, as though she were considering him, and then she gestured with her own hands held above her head and clasped together.

Damen blinked, and then imitated the movement, settling back on the bedroll, raising his own hands above his head, and settling the back of his right hand in the palm of his left. The woman nodded in approval. 

She touched him. He could not look away from her eyes. She did not bother to dispense with any of Damen’s clothing besides opening what was essential, and she did not offer to remove any of her own. Her hand held him in a way that was familiar; she moved with a rhythm that understood how a man is roused and brought to finish. And she seemed to work entirely by feel, for her eyes remained focused on Damen’s face. Damen felt as though her eyes were one of the currents that formed in the sea during a storm, that pulled men in circles away from the shore until they surrendered to the water and drowned.

He did not last very long, overwhelmed by his surprise at her touch, before he was arching backwards and gasping as he finished. He breathed in deeply, and curled up from the pallet once again, wishing to reach for the woman, to draw her in closer to him, to have his turn to enjoy her as well. But he was confronted only with the swaying of the tent flap at the entrance as it settled behind her departure.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far my plan that I will post as I go along to remain motivated seems to be going well! :)

The official meeting was elaborately scripted and narrated by heralds in Veretian. Damen was instructed on every detail from how many steps his horse was to take to the center of the valley to who would hold his sword while he approached the Veretian Regent. 

The summit began with troops assembling in the early dawn light. Nikandros supervised their move into position on the southern side of the valley. The northern end of the valley was a more shallow slope, rolling into subtle grassy hills, while the southern end where the Akielons were arranged was a rocky crest. Nikandros arranged the men on the outcrop of the crest. Heralds instructed all of the troops on the necessity of remaining still.

Damen and his attendants moved into the center of the valley. Damen sat as a figurehead on his horse while the history of the peace summit was read off, listening to the names of the kings who had met in the past. The first summits had been held in the days of Agathon; there had been three in his lifetime. Damen listened to the cadence of the names, hearing his great-grandmother, his grandfather, and finally his father. Theomedes had presided at two summits for the Akielons, each time meeting with King Aleron. Damen had attended the most recent summit as a boy at his father’s side. He remembered feeling antsy during the long reading off of the names and wondering about Prince Auguste’s strange hat. Auguste had been only a few years older than Damen himself, and therefore the foreign Veretian fashions had seemed even more absurd to Damen on Auguste than they had on all of the adults.

But Theomedes was dead now. Damen was no longer a boy at his side free to daydream about things as frivolous as a hat with three feathers. Aleron was also dead, and Auguste as well, the two having been lost in the same border skirmish. Damen stood across from Aleron’s brother, who held the Regency for the new crown prince of Vere, Laurent. Laurent had been too young to stand near his father at the last summit, as he was too young now to take the throne. But he sat tall on his horse next to his uncle, a man on the cusp of adulthood.

The history finished with the addition of their own names to the listing, and Damen was cued that it was time for the formal introduction. He and Kastor signaled their horses to move forward, carefully counting the requisite one hundred paces, and they came to the center of the valley. The sun was cresting over the valley ridge to the east; the scene seemed as one that might be designed just for a painter. They stopped the horses. Damen unsheathed his sword and handed it to his brother to hold. Kastor took it solemnly.

Damen guided his horse forward another five paces.

The trumpeter began their greeting. Damen nodded formally at the Regent.

The Regent, a man of middle age slightly younger than Damen’s father, nodded formally back. Behind him, Damen could see the fair hair of Prince Laurent, holding his uncle’s sword.

“King Damianos,” the Regent greeted, politely ignoring that Damen had not yet actually been crowned. “I was sorry to hear of your father’s passing.”

“Thank you for your condolences.” They spoke Veretian.

“I had looked forward to meeting with him,” said the Regent. “Yet I have heard high praise for you as well, and I am glad for this meeting as well.”

“I wish I were only here by his side,” said Damen honestly. “I am sure you feel the same for the members of your own family who are no longer with us.”

“Yes, of course,” the Regent murmured, and the trumpeter blew once again. 

Damen and the Regent turned away from each other and back to their respective sides of the valley. Damen retrieved his sword from Kastor and sheathed it again at his side, and he and Kastor faced west together and continued in the formal procession out of the valley and toward the beginning of the summit.

To Damen’s eye, the summit seemed designed to allow for no more than a few moments of actual business each day, with the remainder of the time carefully allocated for ceremony or frolic. 

Correspondingly, the Regent hosted a banquet that evening. The pinnacle of the Veretian camp was a tent close in size to an actual palace, made of cloth decorated to look like stones and tapestries and faux glass windows populated with embroidered Veretian lords and ladies of the court decked in finery.

In the Veretian fashion, the Regent and Prince Laurent stood at the entrance of their tent palace to welcome the Akielon guests. Laurent struck Damen as a lighter, sharper shadow of his older brother. Damen remembered Prince Auguste’s hair as the color of honey mead, while Laurent’s was the color of winter butter.

The Regent greeted Damen cordially, nodding at Damen and again at his brother Kastor next to him. The Regent presented his nephew, Laurent. 

Damen nodded at the prince. He was not wearing a hat with feathers such as Damen recalled on Auguste. Laurent was instead sedately dressed in tightly-laced Veretian clothing. His clothing was a dark blue, not the brightly colored hues of many of those in the tent. He was not decorated as the Veretian courtiers Damen could see gathering around the tent palace already, and wore only a circlet peaking with hints of darker gold in his hair. 

Damen extended a hand to Prince Laurent, uncertain whether they would clasp hands in the Akielon fashion or perhaps embrace in the Veretian style. Laurent rejected either motion by moving both of his own hands behind his back and sneering.

“I don’t touch barbarian filth,” said Laurent, in heavily accented Akielon. Damen let his hand drop in surprise. Out of the corner of his eye, Damen could see Kastor’s hand fall onto the hilt of his knife on his belt.

“Laurent,” said the Regent, sounding unsurprised but disappointed. “You insult our guests at a time of peace and friendship.” He scolded his nephew mildly in Veretian. 

“I do not understand why you invite traitors here to eat with us,” said Laurent, speaking to his uncle and in Veretian, though Damen understood Veretian perfectly well. “I cannot sup with men who approach a peace summit with an army preparing for war.” Laurent turned back toward Damen. “We will meet over swords,” he said, and it sounded as deadly a promise as Damen had ever heard on the battlefield.

“Perhaps a friendly bout in the tournament,” Damen managed after a moment. Laurent did not take his comment as an opportunity to lighten their exchange, and responded to Damen’s remark with only an eloquent glare before he turned on his heel and retreated.

“I apologize for my nephew,” said the Regent. “I had worried he was too young for this summit; I fear his behavior today proves that my suspicions were correct.” The Regent included one of the Veretian councilors in this statement with a glance his direction, and the man nodded, as though he and the Regent had previously discussed Prince Laurent.

“There is no offense,” said Damen. 

The banquet was served with a quantity of silver on the table that seemed to Damen as though it could have outfitted an entire troop. Damen’s place setting alone seemed to contain enough utensils to serve a dozen men. There was an empty place at the table near the Regent that Damen suspected was left for Prince Laurent. The Prince was nowhere to be seen.

The meal concluded with music and the guests milling round the tent-hall in smaller private discussions. Damen spoke politely with the Veretian councilors, with several courtiers. The wine served with the meal was not watered and strong. As the evening went on, Damen realized to himself that he felt as though he were seeking something in particular, and it was only toward the end of the evening that he realized what he was searching. It was the woman, the Veretian woman from the camp the night before, the one who had worn a veil. He wished to see her again, to speak with her, and he realized that throughout the dinner he had been looking into the eyes of the banquet guests and rejecting each set as not matching the blue of the eyes of the woman from the night before. 

He supposed that she was probably just a camp follower, and not likely to have merited an invitation to the banquet, but he searched the eyes of the servants as well, and there were no matches. She hadn’t held herself like a camp follower, somehow. 

The valley was dark when Damen and Kastor left the Veretian camp to ride back to their own tents. The sounds of the banquet drifted on the wind through the valley: music, laughter.

Damen turned his horse over to a groom and bid good night to his brother. He nodded at the guards posted near the entrance to his tent, and then he slipped inside.

There was a footfall. Damen turned toward the noise, about to call Lykaios’s name. He would dismiss her; he needed no further service.

It was not Lykaios. It was the veiled woman from the evening before. She was standing in his tent near the table covered over with maps and tiny figures of soldiers. She must have come to see him again, have been waiting for him, though there was something in her posture that spoke of surprise as she turned.

“Oh,” said Damen, and he found himself smiling as he looked upon her. “I had hoped to see you again.”

She stood still with intensity, as a rabbit might when the shadow of a hawk crosses overhead.

Damen took her hand in his own and held it warmly. “I wish to know your name.”

She shook her head, suddenly, and wrenched her hand out of Damen’s grasp, and fled the tent in quick footsteps. Damen’s fingers, which had been warm around her palm a moment before, were suddenly empty save for a single floating ribbon that had fallen out of her sleeve as she left. Damen ran his thumb over the material; it was a blue silk.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day was filled with sport. Damen enjoyed hastiludes; martial games were his preferred form of entertainment. He was more suited to them than to elaborate banquets or theater. 

This tournament was one of the most elaborate Damen had ever attended. There were equestrian competitors wearing helmets with protective face plates prepared for jousting first against a wooden post with a shield and finally against each other. There was an archery competition where some of the commoners with bows were drawing against increasingly distant targets in competition for a golden ring. And there was an extensive line up of bouts fought with well balanced wooden swords by men dancing across the sands. The competitors were mostly young men, often younger sons, those hoping to make their way in the world based on skill and not birth and seeing this as an opportunity to distinguish themselves in front of a royal audience.

It was different than the games that they had in Akielos. Competitors went naked under the hot Akielon sun, and they did not don protective gear to wrestle against each other in the ring or throw javelins across the sand. But the atmosphere was the same, the spirit of competition yet without too much of a thread of real hostility. Damen saw a Veretian swordfighter offer a hand to his Akielon opponent after winning a bout, and the Akielon accepted it gracefully and congratulated the other fighter on his victory with good humor. 

Damen planned to compete himself. Not in the jousting, which was too hazardous for a king to undertake, even with the protective face helmets, but in the sword fighting. The Akielon participants were ordered by rank, so he had no matches until the late afternoon. In the morning he wandered around the other events, lingering in particular to watch some of the younger boys in the sword fighting, and congratulating a particularly small Akielon boy who triumphed in his age group. His name was Straton and he was from near the coast. Damen told him that he should join the King’s Guard when he was older and he saluted Damen enthusiastically. 

He did not have his armor on, yet, since he was not entering the ring himself until later in the day, but he had pinned the lady’s ribbon from the night before to his tunic. He searched her again, wanting to know why she ran. He thought that perhaps she would see him wearing her ribbon, and come to him.

Toward midday, he joined the Regent under a covered awning in front of the rings, the shade, seating, and refreshment having been set up for the royal attendees. 

The Regent greeted him genially. Damen let a Veretian servant set in front of him a plate of food. 

“I hear you are planning to compete,” said the Regent.

Damen nodded. “It is a good opportunity to test my skills.”

The Regent seemed to have noticed the ribbon Damen was wearing, and stared intently as Damen’s chest, inspecting the lace. “You wear a token,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I –" said the Regent, “I did not realize.” He seemed to realize he was behaving oddly and shook himself slightly. “I suppose you must have many suitors in Akielos.”

“I am actually interested in a Veretian,” said Damen.

The Regent seemed discomfited again. “I see,” he said, his eyebrows creased together. After a moment he excused himself and left the tent, and as Damen finished his lunch the games began once again.

The Veretian crown prince did not make an appearance at the tournament until late afternoon. Damen heard the flutter of excitement at his arrival as Kastor was helping him to adjust his leather armor. Damen was wearing a leather breastplate and Kastor was helping him to buckle the leather straps that fastened together the front piece with the back.

“The princeling can’t hold his liquor,” said Kastor under his breath. One of the leather straps had been recently refitted, and was stiff to go through the buckle. “Gets sent away from supper and isn’t awake until the middle of the next day.” 

Damen let his eyes follow Laurent as he made his way to the royal awning and took over the chair that his uncle had vacated earlier, sprawling across it with an entitled insouciance. Laurent waved at one of the servants near the awning, who filled his goblet.

Kastor followed Damen’s gaze, saw Laurent sipping from his goblet, and raised an eyebrow at Damen, as if that proved his earlier statement. 

Damen tested the fit of the armor, flexing his arms out to the sides to ensure that the leather did not cut into the movement of his shoulders. He nodded at Kastor in appreciation, and made his way back over to the royal awning. 

“Prince Laurent.”

Laurent’s eyes focused on Damen, narrowing slightly at the sun behind him. “King Damianos,” he said, adopting the same tone.

“You said we would meet over swords,” said Damen. “Do you care for a match?”

Laurent raised his goblet slowly to his lips. Damen could see his throat move as he swallowed. He set the goblet down on the table beside him. 

“No.”

“We could keep it friendly.”

“No,” said Laurent. If he was hung over he wore it well, physically. He was well groomed, clean-shaven and with his hair neatly plaited. He wore a lighter color than he had the day before, perhaps as a concession to the warmth of the day.

The Regent emerged again at the royal awning. If he were perturbed at his nephew’s appropriation of his seat he did not show it. Damen supposed that he had greater concerns with his nephew’s behavior.

The ringkeeper rang his bell, and Damen was called to his first match.

He fought three bouts, and he won each of them. The second was the closest; a Vaskian woman with a curved sword and a style of fighting that Damen had never encountered before. He would like to practice with her again. He was the highest ranked amongst the Akielon fighters for a reason. It was rare for him to encounter such a challenge on the sands. 

He closed each of the matches by congratulating his opponent and noting something in particular about their style in the ring, and then he retreated to the sidelines and enlisted Straton to help him remove his armor. The boy had practically fallen into the ring as Damen was fighting in his excitement to get a good view.

Straton loosened the buckles and Damen was able to lift the armor off of himself, and he ruffled Straton’s short hair in appreciation and watched Straton run his armor off back to the armory tent. He approached the royal awning from behind, and as he approached he slowed, overhearing the Regent chastising his nephew.

“—and with an Akielon,” said the Regent. “I would not have thought it of you, after you know what happened to Auguste.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Laurent.

“And why you persist in lying to me,” said the Regent. “It is disappointing behavior, even for you.”

Damen made his footsteps louder as he approached, and by the time he stepped under the awning and nodded a greeting at each of the other royal guests their conversation had ceased. 

“Congratulations,” said the Regent. “A fine series of fights.”

Damen thanked him quietly, wondering if the Regent were trying to use Damen as an example to his nephew, who was clearly young, spoiled, and – as the Regent himself had remarked – not ready for diplomacy or statesmanship. It was an unenviable position to be responsible for such a ward.

Laurent seemed to take in Damen with a single dismissive glance, his eyes flicking from Damen’s sweat-damped curls to the blue ribbon on his tunic. 

The games had concluded and the fighters now arranged themselves in the ring again. Those who had won the most matches had earned the honor of being bestowed a prize by one of the members of the royal family. Servants had the prizes arrayed on a table, and Damen, the Regent, and Prince Laurent took turns greeting the fighters and presenting them with their winnings.

Damen presented Straton with a gold coin with genuine enthusiasm, and Straton beamed up at him excitedly before running off to show his mother. Damen congratulated a pair of archers who had managed to tie by each loosing an arrow that split the center of the one before it. The Regent stepped forward to recognize the jousting champion with appropriate solemnity and authoritative congratulations, remembering even a kind word for the man’s horse. 

Prince Laurent was the one to award Damen a prize for the sword fighting. The two of them were along in the center of the ring, Laurent holding the prize; Damen having stepped in front of him to receive it. Most of the fighters knelt in front of royalty to accept their rewards. Damen stood, and Laurent had to look up slightly at him. Laurent was popular amongst his own people, having walked out to accolades amongst the Veretians as though they had never seen the petulant prince drinking under the royal awning and only saw him well turned out on the field as he presented awards.

Laurent stared at him for a long moment, holding still the prize and making no move to present it to Damen. 

“Thank you,” Damen said finally, reaching toward Laurent for the prize.

Laurent managed not to touch him at all as he presented Damen with the golden goblet. Instead of the warmth with which Damen had greeted the fighters, or the stateliness with which his uncle had offered congratulations, Laurent seemed cut of ice. “You have no honor,” said Laurent.

Damen felt his surprise show in his expression. He would have been less surprised if the prince had struck him across the face in the middle of the ring. But Laurent was turning, now, smiling to the crowds that surrounded the ring and gesturing at Damen in response to their applause as though presenting him to them as their champion.

Laurent turned back to Damen and the smile dropped off of his face. Damen did not know what he might have said even if he had control of his own tongue to form the words. He thought back over the day, and he did not know how his own polite, good-natured participation in the tournament at the peace summit became having no honor. What did it even mean to be accused of being honorless by a drunken child? Laurent turned and left the ring before Damen was able to make any reply.

There was feasting again that evening. It was Akielon-style celebration this time, with roasted meats flavored in spices served warm and strong ale. There was no need for seventeen different utensils with which to eat the food, and the men ate with their hands, or with a knife. 

Damen made his excuses early and returned to his own tent. 

He had hoped that the woman might again be there when he returned, that perhaps by arriving earlier in the evening he might have more time with her before she needed to depart. His tent was empty.

He walked the Akielon camp for a time. The night was clear and he could see the outline of the huntress in the sky, the outline of the carcass she carried on her back and the line of her bow. Men on watch saluted at him as he walked past, and he nodded.

He thought perhaps he would see the veiled woman in some unlikely place – he had come upon her in an unassuming Akielon tent for the first time, after all. He found some men playing a game of dice, and declined an invitation to join. He saw a man who had been injured in the jousting earlier in the day being helped to bandage his arm by a woman who must have been one of the camp followers. 

Damen did not find the veiled woman as he walked through the camp, but he did come across the other woman he had found that first evening, the matronly woman who had been mediating the dispute between the veiled woman and the soldier with the broken hand. She was washing clothes in a tub of water near one of the fires, moving the clothes from the tub of hot water to a cooler one, and then wringing them out and hanging the clothes to dry on a line. She paused in her work to warm the hot water again with a kettle from the fire, and Damen took the heavy kettle from her and poured it for her.

She wiped the sweat from her forehead and nodded at him in thanks.

Damen watched her work for another moment. She did not seem bothered by his presence. “I would ask you something.”

She scrubbed the fabric hard against the washing board. 

“The woman from the other night,” said Damen. “I wish to know more about her.”

“Seemed like you got to know more about her than me,” she said.

“How did she come to be in our camp?” said Damen, the questions flowing out of him. “Where did you come upon her? Why did she wear a veil?”

The washerwoman grunted, her movements unceasing. “There’s only so many reasons a woman wears a veil.”

“What do you mean?” said Damen.

The washerwoman paused in her work, finally, and straightened, looking at Damen. “Are you certain she was a woman?”

Damen blinked. “I –" he said. “But you – and she – "

The washerwoman seemed to take this as an answer, and turned back to her work, bending over the tub once again. 

Feeling dismissed in a way he hadn’t since he was a child and his father used to shoo him out of meetings with the kyroi, Damen walked back through the camp toward his tent.

He thought again, as he entered his tent, that perhaps the woman would be there again. Or the man. He was turning it over in his head now, trying to imagine again the shape of her body underneath her dress, the way that she had moved, wondering again. 

But as he ducked through the tent flap at the entrance, the tent was empty. The woman did not come.


	4. Chapter 4

Damen awoke early the next morning and joined one of the groups of men going through the dawn exercises near his tent, various clusters of men moving at different paces through the same traditional moves all over the camp. Nikandros offered the role of the caller to Damen as he joined them. It was traditional for the man of highest rank to set the pace and signal the moves with the count. But Damen had learned, over his short weeks of experience being king, that one of the privileges of the highest rank was the ability to deny such privileges, and he waved at Nikandros to continue and simply participated in the moves in the same line as the other men. 

As the sun rose higher in the sky, Damen prepared to discuss the peace treaty. Damen and the Regent met semi-privately, each only accompanied to the diplomatic tent by a few trusted advisors. The idea was that, having established rapport and friendship through the games and entertainments, they would now be in a state of mind to negotiate mutually advantageous trade arrangements.

The diplomacy tent was small in comparison to the palace monstrosity that the Veretians had assembled and shown off during their first banquet, and the diplomacy tent was on a fraction a size of the fighting ring or the wooden seating that had been assembled the day before for the games. The tent was arranged to seat the delegates from the Akielon side and the Veretian side in alternation around a circular table – so that there was no feeling of opposition, the steward explained to Damen. Three scribes sat at the table also, two taking down the nature of the discussion, and a third capturing the provisions of the treaty as it was agreed upon in their talks.

Damen had had an agenda for this discussion even before he arrived at the summit. His discussions with kyroi in the northern provinces over the last few years had given him cause to worry about unrest along the border, and he raised this concern with the Regent. He mentioned it first lightly, not wishing to appear accusatory, especially when the same border unrest had contributed to losses on the Veretian side, such as the death of Prince Auguste. But when his first mention was acknowledged by the Regent with a sympathetic noise but not worked at all into the language of the treaty being copied down by the scribe, Damen raised the concern again, to make his intentions clear. 

Prince Laurent was not in attendance at the negotiations. Damen assumed that the Regent had determined that his nephew’s behavior had shown him too young to be included in such a meeting. It was unfortunate. Damen knew from his own experience at his father’s side that there were important lessons to be learned from observing such negotiations. Laurent was not a boy of ten, as Damen had been during the last summit, either. At Laurent’s age, Damen had led fifty men during a battle in Troia.

When Laurent took over the Veretian throne it would be to all of their advantages if he had as much training and experience in diplomacy as possible. But Damen could understand, after having met Laurent the last few days, why the Regent would consider his nephew not ready.

They broke for a midday meal. Damen was excused from having to make polite conversation with the Veretians by the Regent retreating with his three councilors to a private conversation in another tent, and Damen felt the set of his shoulders relax slightly. He might be more suited to diplomacy than Laurent, but it was still not his preferred battleground. He could relax further speaking with Nikandros during the meal than carefully weighing of each of his remarks and translating them into Veretian.

The time had come for them to resume after the meal, but the Veretians had not returned. Damen began to hear a commotion outside the diplomacy tent, so he and Nikandros stepped out to see what was going on.

Laurent had arrived on a horse with two of the other Veretian council members. The Regent was again chastising his nephew; the council members looked grave. One of the men was stroking his beard, the two who had arrived with Laurent on horseback looked tired. One of the men nodded along with something that the Regent was saying.

Laurent sat tall on his horse and seemed undeterred by the lecture his uncle was giving him from the ground. Damen had to at least credit him that he had a fine posture as a horseman; perhaps he should spend more time learning the duties of a king and less time riding. As Damen and Nikandros came out of the tent, Laurent spared the two of them only a glance.

“They were there,” Laurent said. “I saw them myself yesterday morning; I did not hallucinate two thousand men in Akielon colors on a ride.”

“But they were not there this morning,” said the Regent. The two councilors on horseback nodded. “How do you explain that?” 

Laurent appeared as though he were gritting his teeth. “They must have moved – there would have been sufficient time yesterday afternoon and last night.”

“We did not see any evidence of a camp,” said one of the councilors.

“We did not venture close enough to have seen any evidence,” interrupted Laurent, “even though I am sure it was there to be observed.”

“Enough,” said the Regent, turning his head at this point to call attention to Damen and Nikandros, and then turning back to his own advisors. “We are embarrassing ourselves with this dispute in front of our allies. Nephew, we have indulged your claims of a hidden Akielon army, you have only proven to all of us again that you cannot be relied upon.”

“You will regret this,” said Laurent, his gaze taking in not only his own uncle and the Veretian councilors, but Damen and Nikandros.

“Return to our tent,” said the Regent. “I will speak with you about your behavior later.”

There was a drawn out moment of silence during which no one moved. The Regent nodded finally at one of the Veretian guards standing near the tent, and the man moved forward toward the head of Laurent’s horse, as though to lead the beast – and Laurent as the rider – away. Laurent turned the horse suddenly, moving away from the guard, and rode back toward the Veretian camp of his own accord. 

The afternoon negotiations seemed to progress at the pace of a snail crawling along a leaf. The Regent was mostly quiet, and Jeuffre and Guion did a great deal of the talking for the Veretians. Nikandros spoke the most for the Akielons, and by the conclusion of the afternoon Damen was tired of hearing even Nikandros’s calm tones.

They adjourned finally with plans to pick up again the next day. There were thankfully no entertainments planned for the evening. Damen and Nikandros rode together on their return to the Akielon tents. It was a windy evening and the grass flattened down to the ground in the valley as they rode.

Damen waited to speak until they were on the southern side of the valley. His words were almost eaten by the sound of the wind. It seemed as though it might be near to storming. “Did you move Timon’s men?”

Nikandros seemed to be anticipating the question. “Yes.”

A gust of wind caught Damen’s cloak, and it took him a moment to settle it again. 

Nikandros continued. “Kastor suggested that the position might not be secure; they are moved closer to the river.”

Damen nodded. 

The wind was less violent as they emerged from the valley on top of the ridge where the Akielon tents were constructed. The sky remained a darker shade of grey than the time of day merited. Men were moving around the Akielon camp with the suppressed urgency that often preceded a storm, seeing to the horses, moving supplies under canvas covers. 

Nikandros offered to join Damen in his tent to review the positioning of the troops. Damen declined, telling Nikandros that he needed an evening to himself. His head hurt after the long day of Veretian discussions, as though each of the Veretian words were small insects buzzing inside of his head. He had thoughts only of his bed and perhaps calling for Lykaios to gently rub his temples. 

But when Damen stepped in to his own tent; he was realized that he was not alone.


	5. Chapter 5

The tent was dimly lit. There were no torches; the brazier was banked in the corner and let off a low glow. The canvas of the tent rippled in the wind, stretching against the frame.

Damen looked at the figure in his tent with new eyes, trying to see the body as a man disguised as a woman. The clothes were the same, the dark colored dress obscuring much of the body, and the head wrap still draped to hide the face.

Damen’s visitor was looking over the maps still spread out on the table, one hand reaching out as though about to touch one of the small horse figures. The man – Damen was still tasting the idea in his head – did not seem to have heard Damen enter the tent over the sound of the wind.

Damen stepped up closely behind the man, and he was close enough that he could feel the sudden tension in the other body when the man realized that Damen had managed to sneak up on him. Damen wrapped his arms around the man in a restraining hold. The man tested Damen’s hold, briefly, but did not struggle.

“Who are you?” said Damen, speaking Akielon. 

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” the man responded. His voice, even muffled slightly by the veil, confirmed that he was a man. He spoke Akielon with a heavy accent. 

The man moved, suddenly, half-slipping from Damen’s hold, and they moved a few steps across the tent as they scuffled. Damen remembered suddenly the first night that he had seen the veiled woman, and the soldier with the broken hand, and he tightened his grip on the man’s wrists.

They lost their balance and toppled sideways, landing half onto Damen’s bedroll spread out on the floor of the tent. Damen lost his hold on the man but rolled on top of the man to press his advantage in the new position. He reached for the man’s veil and pulled it off as just he became aware of a commotion happening outside his tent. 

The commotion became louder, voices carrying in to the tent even over the noise of the wind, and suddenly there was a burst of people entering into Damen’s tent just as he was staring down at the man underneath him and realizing that the veiled woman was actually the Veretian Prince Laurent.

Damen rolled off of the prince in surprise, and Laurent rose again to his feet, more recognizable with his fair hair and his features revealed when Damen had pulled off his veil. 

There were five men who had poured into the tent with this interruption. The Regent was accompanied by two of the Veretian councilors again, Guion and Jeuffre. Nikandros had stepped inside next to Damen’s half-brother Kastor. All of the men seemed amidst an argument with each other, and finding Laurent in the tent seemed to be key to the arguments on each side.

“You said he was not here,” said one of the Veretian councilors, Guion, pointing at Laurent accusingly and glaring at Nikandros.

“He’s a spy,” said Kastor.

“What scandal,” said Jeuffre. “The prince is only sixteen. This is an assault to his innocence.”

“My innocence?” said Laurent, his tone scathing.

Kastor repeated his accusation that Laurent was there as a spy. Guion objected that the Akielons could hardly execute the crown prince like a common spy. Kastor retorted that it was very Veretian to expect special treatment.

Jeuffre said, “They must marry. It is the only way to avoid scandal.”

“Marry?” said Laurent, sounding even more incredulous.

Jeuffre and Guion each seemed on the verge of bursting forth with further accusations.

Damen drew in a breath, but the Regent spoke first. His voice was as calm and reasoned as it had been earlier in the day during peace negotiations, his appearance unruffled by the surprise of finding his nephew in Damen’s tent.

“It seems to me,” said the Regent, “that there are two possible explanations for what we have all seen here.” Laurent made as if he were going to speak, and his uncle silenced him by raising his hand.

“It seems that in one story,” said the Regent, “we have interrupted an assignation, and of course the desire for privacy in such events could explain why our Akielon friends were so anxious to deny that Laurent was here. But if it is an assignation, now that it is discovered, there could be no objection to marriage to alleviate the scandal.”

“It is –" said Laurent, but his uncle interrupted him.

“Or,” said the Regent, “the Akielons denied that Laurent was here because they did not know, and he is in fact a spy, and it is only fair for him to be turned over to Akielon justice for this crime.”

Laurent, who had appeared about to speak in response to his uncle, seemed to take this second alternative like a blow, and shut his mouth again.

The Regent was turning around the room, slowly, checking with the men present for their agreement. Guion and Jeuffre expressed their agreement, Kastor and Nikandros were looking to Damen for his response. The Regent himself turned finally to Damen.

“King Damianos,” said the Regent. “Perhaps you could help clarify for us which it is.”

Ever since he had seen Laurent’s face on the bed beneath him, the implications were coming to Damen, one after another. Damen realized that Laurent was, in fact, a spy. All of the thoughts Damen had wondered about what brought a Veretian veiled woman to the Akielon camp on the eve of war were very succinctly answered by a mischievous Veretian prince dressed in disguise and taking advantage of every opportunity he could to find out more information about his enemy.

Yet, at the same time, Guion was correct. If revealed more widely, the people would press for execution. It was hard to condemn a boy to death for a prank, however foolish his actions had been.

“It was an assignation,” said Damen. He could see Kastor’s reaction of disgust out of the corner of his eyes and avoided looking at his brother by keeping his gaze focused on the Regent. 

Councilor Jeuffre spoke again. “And you will offer marriage, to be honorable?”

The weather outside the tent had turned worse, and Jeuffre’s statement was punctuated with a clash of thunder. Rain began; hitting on the canvas of the tent with sharp patters, first one drop, then another, then many all together.

“Yes,” said Damen, finally. “My intentions are honorable; I offer marriage.”

Damen found his eyes on Laurent himself. Laurent was staring at his uncle, his hands tightly fisted at his sides.

“Laurent?” said the Regent, his tone still mild, as though he were surveying the table for their opinions of a particular dish at a meal, and not offering his nephew a cursed choice. “You must have no objection to the king’s proposal? Unless of course it was not an assignation.”

Damen expected petulance; he was surprised to see Laurent fall to his knees in front of his uncle with what appeared to be genuine distress. “Uncle, please,” said Laurent quietly in Veretian. “If you have any fondness for me, please, do not do this.”

The Regent rested a heavy hand on his nephew’s bent head and looked grave. “I have warned you about your behavior. Actions have consequences.”

Jeuffre seemed anxious to escort Laurent out of the tent as though Damen might try to claim his marital rights at any moment. Kastor, looking furious, ducked out of the tent without further comment.

“Perhaps we could offer you some hospitality until the weather improves,” said Nikandros, ushering the Veretians out of Damen’s tent. Laurent’s uncle offered him a hand to assist him in standing up, and Laurent left the tent with a subdued air. Damen was left alone with the sound of the rain and the fabric of the veil still lying discarded on his bed.


	6. Chapter 6

It stormed much of the night. When Damen emerged from his tent in the morning to join the men in the morning exercises the ground was still wet, and strewn with leaves and branches and other detritus loosened by the window and the rain.

The peace summit negotiations the following day where almost entirely preempted by plans for the wedding, instead.

Damen at first suggested a long engagement, in deference to the prince’s age and each of their positions. He was thinking several years – perhaps until the prince came of age. Many things might happen in the next few years.

The idea of a long engagement was rapidly rejected by Jeuffre with a scandalized, “But we saw you in bed together.” Damen was tempted to object, to deny what they had seen. Both Damen and Laurent had been fully dressed, after all. But it seemed clear that nothing would convince Jeuffre and that Jeuffre exhibited no hesitation in asking Damen personal questions. Damen could not fully deny Jeuffre’s accusations, anyway. He remembered having sex with the veiled woman on the first evening he met her. It was challenging for him to piece that memory in his head next to the memories he had of Prince Laurent during the rest of the summit. But it would be impossible to insist to Jeuffre that their relationship were entirely platonic, Damen supposed. Jeuffre seemed to place a peculiar emphasis on Laurent’s virtue, as though he were a palace slave being preserved for his first night and now his value were in question.

Given the discovery of Laurent in Damen’s tent, and the rumors that were already flying only one day later in both camps, it was agreed that they would marry now, at the peace summit. 

So the day was filled with debates of protocol. How many men would stand with each of the grooms during the ceremony? Would the men be armed? Would they wear ceremonial headpieces? Would the ceremony be conducted in Veretian or Akielon or both? Who would be the officiant? 

The questions seemed endless. Damen reflected to himself that if he had realized how tedious it were to plan for a Veretian wedding that he might have reconsidered his offer the night before. And that was before the steward asked who would stand witness for the Akielons.

“What do you mean?” said Damen.

“Who will act as the witness for the Akielon family?” said the steward.

They had already gone through the ceremony in great detail, and it seemed to Damen that the entire attendance of the summit was going to be joining as witnesses, so he did not understand the question. He said as much.

“The witness for the consummation,” said the steward.

“What?” said Damen. Something of his frustration must have come through in his voice; the steward looked up from his list and became tentative.

“It is traditional that the consummation of the marriage be witnessed by members of each groom’s family,” said the steward. “This ensures the validity and –"

“No,” Damen interrupted. “There will be no witnesses.”

“The Veretian witness has already been selected,” said the steward.

“No,” said Damen. 

The steward looked uncertain.

“There will be no witnesses,” said Damen. 

The steward’s murmured response was not entirely reassuring, but he let that question drop and proceeded to the question of wedding gifts.

Nikandros and Damen ate their evening meal together. They spent most of the meal in silence. Once they had each finished, Nikandros spoke. “Are you certain that this marriage is a wise course?”

Damen stared down at his empty plate. “Old friend,” he said. “I am certain it is not.”

Nikandros nodded thoughtfully. “You do not marry for love,” he said, half a statement and half a question.

Damen laughed in response, but there was no enjoyment in it.

Nikandros raised his eyebrows slightly. “You behaved, the first few days of the summit, much like a man in love, anxious to be away again and see his beloved. I thought perhaps—" 

Damen closed his eyes briefly. “I…” he began. He thought a moment longer. “I was not attentive enough to my father’s advice,” he said, thinking of his father’s counsel on Veretian treachery. 

“Your father counseled you to marry,” said Nikandros.

“I do not think this is what he wished,” said Damen. “It pains me to think of his disappointment.” They were silent for another long moment. “Is there another path? Please advise me.”

“You know the other path,” said Nikandros. “We have spoken of it before.”

Damen rubbed his chin with his hand; he hadn’t shaved that morning, after the storm, and he had dark stubble. “I do not yet think it has come to that,” said Damen.

“It is wise to only use war in a case of last resort,” said Nikandros.

“We made progress in negotiations,” said Damen, “before—" he waved a hand to indicate the chaos which had accompanied the engagement. “This gives us new reason for goodwill. We can make further progress. I have hope that there is no need for bloodshed.”

Nikandros nodded.

Damen was not permitted – by Veretian tradition and Jeuffre’s strict regulations – to see Laurent again before the wedding itself. He thought, once or twice, during the three days leading up to the ceremony, of what the prince might be thinking. 

He wondered if Laurent was begging his uncle for another path with the same desperation with which Damen had turned to Nikandros. Or he remembered Kastor’s comments about the prince’s lack of moderation with alcohol. Perhaps the prince was drunk and thoroughly ignoring all of the preparations. Damen thought once of Laurent’s ease of entering the Akielon camp and Damen’s tent. Damen thought that if he had had an assurance of the same success venturing north, he might have gone to seek the prince out. To speak with him the way Damen still had not really had an opportunity to do, and see if perhaps between the two of them there might not have been another idea for a path going forward. But Damen had no confidence that he could gain entrance to the Veretian palace tent, and no reason to think that Laurent would speak with him even if he did.

The day of the ceremony arrived. The Veretians had assembled another tent specifically for the occasion. The weather was fine, and the tent was made of a transparent gauze, providing only a slight shelter against the sun. Damen supposed that the Veretians had fairer skin that required such luxury; his own skin was obviously already sun-darkened.

The inside of the tent was decorated with bouquets of flowers wrapped with ribbons in each of their colors, the red and the blue intertwined. The ceremony itself seemed oddly brief after all of the preparations leading up to it, and after only a few minutes Damen was standing in front of Laurent, repeating his vows.

Damen was of higher rank, so he spoke first, and then Laurent repeated his vows after the officiant a moment later in a clear voice. Damen wondered if the prince took any of the words he was saying seriously, if it even occurred to him to take the words seriously, or if he was so accustomed to the Veretian culture of lying that he thought nothing of them.

Damen had always been aware of the potential advantages of a political marriage. There had not been particularly good prospects for it, for him. The allies that Akielos could have most benefited from such a relationship had no sons or daughters of the right age. Torgeir had mentioned to Damen once the prospect of his granddaughter, but she was only a girl of ten, and Damen had deferred such discussions until she was older. 

They processed out of the tent hand-in-hand when the ceremony completed. Laurent’s hand was cool in Damen’s. Laurent was shorter than Damen, but he kept in step with Damen’s stride easily.

A series of steps up to a platform had been assembled out in front, purely for the purpose allowing them to wave at the assembled crowds. Laurent walked up to the top first. Damen followed behind him. Laurent waved magnanimously at the assembled Veretians and Akielons together. Laurent was a perfect prince if you only saw him from a distance, Damen decided. He cut an impressive figure in his wedding clothes, he stood straight and he behaved politely to the commoners. It was only when you knew him more intimately that it became obvious he was a serpent. 

Damen offered a salute at his own people, and was greeted with a cheer and a return salute from his men. 

There was no one else within earshot. Damen was waiting for Laurent to say something; he was braced for a remark the way he had not been when they had stood together in the middle of the tournament ring. He wondered if Laurent would skip the bitchy remarks and go straight for pushing Damen over the edge of the platform to fall hard on the rocks. That was probably too straightforward for Laurent, Damen decided, the prince would certainly have some method of making it at least appear like an accident. He grasped Laurent’s hand a bit more tightly, deciding that if one of them were going to fall they were both going to fall together.

“Frightened of heights?” Laurent said, his tone filled with false honey sweetness. 

Damen looked sidelong at him. “I thought you were more creative than that,” he said. 

The corner of Laurent’s mouth twitched slightly. “You might be slightly cleverer than I thought.”

They descended from the platform after a quarter of an hour, and then were whisked off to the events of the rest of the day.

The day passed, and it became evening, and Damen found himself being escorted to yet another elaborately decorated Veretian tent. He was, his attendant explained, now to consummate the marriage. 

There were Veretian guards on the tent, and the Regent stood next to one of the Veretian councilors outside the entrance. There were no Akielons present; Damen supposed his refusal to name any Akielon witnesses contributed to the inequity.

“Good evening,” the Regent greeted Damen.

Damen attempted to smile politely; he suspected the expression was more of a grimace. 

“The prince is within,” said the attendant. “It is time to begin.”

Damen supposed that this was how it happened, in Vere. If they made eating a meal so complicated that it required seventeen separate utensils and three hours, it was no surprise that sex was made similarly complex.

“If you would just give me a moment,” said Damen, trying to sound polite. “I would like to speak to the prince in private before we begin.”

The attendant looked disturbed by this departure from the schedule, but Damen gave him no time to object, ducking in to the tent and closing the flap quickly behind him to deter any immediate followers.

The tent was filled mostly with a large bed, an elaborate contraption with tall pedestals and draped with the same gauzy fabric as the wedding tent, as though to give a semblance of privacy around the bed. Surrounding the bed was a table with a pitcher and two goblets, and two chairs. For the witnesses, Damen supposed.

Laurent was already in the tent. He stood near the table with the pitcher; he was holding one of the filled goblets in his hand. He was regarding the goblet closely, as though uncertain whether he wished to drink it. He turned slightly when he heard Damen enter. He did not set down the goblet.

“Quickly,” said Damen, moving toward the rear of the tent. “Let’s go.”

Laurent frowned. “There is only one exit.”

“It’s a tent, not a rock prison,” said Damen, loosening one of the pegs that held the canvas back of the tent in place and lifting up the canvas. Dim light from the twilight came in to the tent through the gap.

Laurent set down the goblet and moved to crouch next to Damen at the gap in the tent. Damen nodded at him, and Laurent ducked through and out of the tent. Damen followed, letting the canvas drop down behind the both of them.

He found the horse he’d ordered tied at the post, and he moved quickly toward the animal and untied her. Damen mounted and held an hand out to Laurent to help him mount behind. 

Laurent had a moue of distaste on his face. “You couldn’t have brought two horses?” 

“Do you prefer the alternative?” said Damen, nodding back at the tent.

Laurent’s expression firmed, and he accepted Damen’s hand and mounted easily, settling into the saddle, his hips rolling in to place behind Damen’s own. He was at least a fine horseman, Damen thought again.

Damen signaled the horse into motion just as there started to be raised voices behind them, perhaps impatient for Damen’s private discussion with Laurent to be concluded, or discovering that the two of them were now both absent from the tent. Damen did not bother to look back, and guided the horse out of the Veretian camp and across the valley.

“We cannot hide forever,” said Laurent, his face pressed up against Damen’s back.

“We’ll tell them I’m shy,” said Damen, and it took him a moment to recognize the motion in Laurent’s body behind him as suppressed laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading along with me as I write! I hope you are enjoying my story. :)


	7. Chapter 7

Damen took them to his own tent for lack of any better place to go. Laurent dismounted first, standing next to the horse. Damen followed, and then he gestured to a groom and turned over the horse to the man. He nodded Laurent toward the tent. 

“I would invite you in but you do not seem to require an invitation,” said Damen.

Laurent gave him a look, and walked in to the tent. Damen stepped in after him.

Laurent seemed to linger near the doorway, uncertain.

“You are not eager to inspect my battle plans again,” said Damen, gesturing toward his table of maps.

Laurent cast a glance at the table and then looked back at Damen. “I assumed you had found a more prudent place for your secrets.” Damen had, after purposefully moving the pieces on the map in his own tent into a ridiculous formation. 

Laurent paced from one side of the tent near the table to the far side near the bedroll, then turned on his heel and walked halfway back. He turned back to Damen, still near the door.

“Will you at least offer me a drink?” said Laurent. “Or is that too civilized for Akielos.”

Damen pointed at a table of refreshments set up by one of the slaves in the corner of the tent, and while Laurent stepped over to inspect it, Damen himself crossed over to his bedroll and lowered himself down. 

Laurent came and knelt beside him, one of the goblets in his left hand. He sipped it cautiously, then set it down near to the lamp.

“So,” said Laurent. “Is it exhibitionism you don’t care for, or simply my uncle?”

Damen looked at the prince’s face. Laurent was looking back at Damen, but was not quite meeting his eyes. Laurent’s gaze flicked from Damen’s lips, to his brow, to a spot on the bedroll next to his head, and so forth, without settling.

“It did not seem that either of us wanted to be there,” said Damen finally.

Laurent reached for his goblet, took another swallow, and replaced it by the lamp again. The flicker of the lamplight was kind to his features, and it warmed his hair to a darker gold.

“What are you waiting for?” said Laurent. “Have you some sort of perverse tastes?”

Damen drew on the muscles of his stomach to pull himself into a seated position, and noted how Laurent flinched backward very slightly when this brought them into rather close proximity. Damen reached across the bedroll toward the lamp and took the goblet into his own hand.

He raised the goblet to his own lips. Laurent made a small noise of protest. Damen raised an eyebrow at Laurent – was the prince so possessive as to deny Damen drinking his own wine in his own tent? Laurent bit his lower lip and said nothing more.

Damen could already taste the flavor on his tongue. He set the goblet down again, placing it a bit further out of reach than it had been, and chased the flavor off of his lips with his tongue. “Why did you drug the wine?”

Laurent looked faintly uncomfortable. “It is not poison,” he said.

“I know what it is,” said Damen, having recognized the drug from an exhausting and debauched afternoon in his own youth.

“Then you know why I did it,” said Laurent.

Laurent’s eyes seemed caught by the curve of Damen’s shoulder. Damen waited but Laurent did not raise his gaze any further. 

“I’m not the virgin Jeuffre makes me out to be,” said Laurent.

“I am not certain what you consider perverse in Vere,” said Damen, returning to Laurent’s earlier question. “But my taste is for partners who wish to be with me.”

“If you send me away they will only drag us both back to the consummation tent,” said Laurent.

Damen inspected the prince for a moment. “That is not going to be necessary. They are going to find us here, and everyone will assume what we have been doing.” Damen nodded toward the goblet. “Especially with that on your breath.” 

He began removing his own clothing, pulling off his boots and shedding his tunic in heap by the side of the bed. He ran his fingers through his own hair a few times to disarray the curls, and then lay back down on the bed. He turned pointedly toward the tent wall and closed his eyes for slumber, and listened to Laurent behind him blowing out the lamp and then disrobing of his own clothing in a much more complicated unlacing. 

Damen did not sleep well. He lingered in a doze, kept from a deeper sleep by the confined impulse that he could not roll over, by the occasional louder breath from the body behind him.

They were interrupted in the morning. Damen had no trouble looking as though he’d spent little of the night sleeping; he blinked in the light let in to their tent. Laurent did a masterful job of looking disheveled; his hair was like a bird’s nest and his posture in the bed was languorous and satisfied.

Their early morning visitor was Jeuffre, he called back to someone else outside the tent. “I have found them!”

Damen rubbed his own temples. Laurent sat up in the bed. “Where are my pants,” he murmured, just loud enough to be overheard by Jeuffre, who had let the tent flap drop again after having established the location of his missing prince. Damen watched Laurent pull his clothes on haphazardly, leaving his jacket unlaced. Laurent then felt at his own hair, trying for a moment to smooth it, and then seemingly abandoning it as hopeless. Laurent left the tent. 

Damen pulled on his own clothes and found his own short hair much easier to tame.

Jeuffre had arrived along with Laurent’s retinue and the Prince’s Guard, and along with them had arrived a Veretian tent, which was now being assembled amidst the much plainer brown canvas Akielon shelters.

Once assembled, Laurent’s tent resembled a fancy Veretian macaroon placed amongst small plain Akielon loaves of bread. Laurent disappeared into his confection of a tent and Damen did not see him again the rest of the day.

Damen returned to the summit negotiations, hopeful that they could make more progress now that the endless discussions of the wedding were behind them. He sat down at the table across from the Regent, who regarded him evenly and said nothing about Damen and Laurent’s hasty exit from the tent the day before.

“Congratulations,” said the Regent. Damen supposed that if nothing else, the man was probably grateful that his troublesome nephew was now someone else’s problem.

“Thank you,” said Damen evenly. “I hope that now that we are united by marriage, we can find amiable terms to settle the issues along the border.”

Damen’s hopes were in vain. Over the next three days of negotiations, the discussions became progressively more and more futile. On the first day, Guion and Kastor began bickering on the appropriate punishment for espionage, and Damen finally had to suggest a break for refreshment and then send his brother out for a walk to cool his head. On the second day, Jeuffre made insinuations about Damen’s sexual proclivities and probable treatment of Laurent throughout the morning. The second afternoon felt like the earth rumbling before a rock slide into the ocean. On the third day, there was discussion again of the positioning of the Akielon army; two of the Veretian councilors having apparently rode out again and seen the evidence that Laurent had insisted must be present of the army’s presence in the recent past.

At the conclusion of the third day, Damen turned to the Regent. “Tell me honestly,” he said. “I wish very much for a peace treaty; we are struggling these past few days. Do you think we are going to be able to come to terms here?”

The Regent stroked his beard slowly. “I am sure that we can come to an agreement.”

“I hope it is so,” said Damen. “But I am losing my faith.”

Damen met with Nikandros and Kastor that evening. They met in Damen’s tent, though Kastor questioned at the beginning of the evening whether they were safe in that location from spies.

Damen assured him that they were. He actually suspected there was a far smaller chance of Laurent coming into Damen’s tent now than there had been a week prior. There were no longer any battle plans to draw him. Laurent kept mostly to his own tent and his own retinue. Damen had seen him venture out only once in the past three days, and even then he had not gone far and had retreated back to his own tent at the first sight of Damen.

They spoke of war. 

Kastor was passionately for it, and made no secret of his feelings. Nikandros was a moderating influence, more reserved and prudent with his opinions. Damen was reluctant. He had visions of the men on the march, and then the men after a battle, tending to the wounded, burying the dead. When his father had declared war it had never occurred to Damen to question. When he felt those men’s lives weigh on his own shoulders, to give up on diplomacy after only a matter of days seemed paltry. 

“You know it’s what Father would have wanted,” said Kastor.

“Did you ever speak with him on it?” said Damen. He could remember discussions with his father about the idea of war with Vere in general, of course. Theomedes had drilled into Damen a healthy respect for the Veretian fortresses along the southern border, and lectured him on siege tactics and their general lack of success. But Damen could not recall his father saying anything about war with Vere in specific, such as a directive that Theomedes thought that now was the time, or that the scales had finally tipped to make the reward worth the risk.

“Of course,” said Kastor, his eyebrows creased. “All the time. He mentioned it in his dying words.”

Damen ran a finger along the edge of the table just below the thick paper of the map. 

“All right,” he said finally.

“It is war, then,” said Nikandros.

“Yes,” said Damen. “Prepare the men.”

Nikandros nodded.

“What are you going to do about your…” Kastor’s face twisted as he looked for the right word.

“I’ll take care of it,” said Damen.

Damen had a vague thought that Laurent’s guard might bar him at the entrance to the tent, but they let him through without a comment. Damen entered the Veretian tent and took in the interior with a glance. There was a pallet for the prince to sleep on, a table spread with correspondence. Damen had been uncertain in what state he would find Laurent, uncertain whether the prince would be drunk, or hung over, or mid-fuck with one of his own guards. He had not anticipated what he did find, which was Laurent reclined on a cushion next to the brazier, reading a book. He had a goblet sitting next to him, but as Damen took a step closer he realized the goblet only contained water.

Laurent set the book to the side as Damen entered but made no move to rise. “Husband,” said Laurent evenly. “What brings you to my tent?”

“Pack up your things,” said Damen.

Laurent tilted his head to the side. “What?”

“Have your men pack up your things,” said Damen.

“Are we going somewhere?” said Laurent.

“I am returning you to your uncle.”

“What?” said Laurent, looking more stricken than this announcement should have merited.

Damen nodded. “I am declaring war,” he told Laurent. “And despite what you might think, I am not without honor. I do not wish to use you as a hostage against your own family, so you are returning Vere.”

“You can’t,” Laurent protested, standing up from the cushion.

Damen did not reply, just raised an eyebrow. “Be ready by tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll tell them everything else I’ve learned,” said Laurent.

“You already told them everything,” said Damen. “How else did Guion know about the plans for a raid near Sicyon.”

“I never told them about that,” said Laurent. Color was rising in his face and his voice was tense.

“I caught you red-handed in my tent,” said Damen.

“But I didn’t tell them about that,” said Laurent, more quietly the second time but with even greater urgency. “I only showed them to where the men were camped along the ridge.”

“I have less patience than your uncle for your lies,” said Damen, turning to leave the Veretian tent.

Laurent ran up to him, and wrapped his fingers around Damen’s forearm. “Wait,” Laurent said breathlessly. “Please. Don’t return me to my uncle.”

Damen tolerated Laurent’s hand on his arm for a moment, then he took his right hand, placed it around Laurent’s wrist, and gently but firmly removed Laurent’s hand from his arm. “I do not know what you are plotting,” said Damen, “but—"

“Do you know what he said to me,” said Laurent suddenly, interrupting Damen. “What my uncle said, before the marriage was to be consummated?”

Damen did not know. He could guess. A caution about lying, about sneaking into the tents of strange men in disguise, a plea to do honor to his country with his behavior.

“He said,” Laurent swallowed, as though the words were hard to repeat. “He said that I disgust him, and that he was never going to take me to his bed again, but that he found the idea of the Akielon king having his sloppy seconds to have a strange sort of appeal, and that he looked forward to watching it.”

Damen found it hard to hear such words even come out of Laurent’s mouth; the filth of his words were so incongruent with the beauty of his appearance. Damen’s disgust was clear on his face. 

Laurent tilted his chin up defiantly. “So you can’t send me back.”

There was a long moment of silence in the tent. Each of them were breathing heavily. Damen could hear his own inhale and exhale, and Laurent’s in alternation. Laurent was breathing more quickly than Damen, but the patterns of their breath came into alignment as the seconds passed.

“I don’t believe you,” said Damen.


	8. Chapter 8

Laurent gave a choked half-sob that went further toward convincing Damen he was telling the truth than a thousand words might have. “I do not wish war,” said Laurent. “It is not in either of our interests. How can I convince you?”

Damen focused his gaze on Laurent’s eyes. It was almost startling to realize that he recognized them. There had been something in Laurent’s eyes that had captured him that first time that they met, and he had spent the first days of the summit searching for the owner of those eyes, wanting to see them again. He had just been searching in all of the wrong places. It seemed incongruous that the eyes he had wished to see again so desperately were now in front of him.

“It takes only one falsehood to make a man question dozens of honest words,” said Damen.

“When have I been false?” said Laurent. “You of all people know that I was telling the truth about the men on the ridge.”

“If you do not wish war,” said Damen, “why can we make no progress on the treaty?”

“My uncle’s interests are not mine,” said Laurent. “You know I have not been privy to the negotiations.”

“If there can be no treaty, then there must be war,” said Damen.

“Think on it,” said Laurent. “Who might have told Guion of the raid planned near Sicyon if not me?”

“There is no one else,” said Damen.

Laurent raised an eyebrow as if this statement disappointed him. “Your plans were not especially secure.”

“I spoke only of the plans with my brother and my generals,” said Damen. “The plans are not so widespread that you can shift responsibility off of yourself that easily.”

Damen could see Laurent’s fists clench in frustration. Laurent closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. “What if I find out my uncle’s plans for you.”

Damen frowned. “How do you propose to do that?”

Laurent looked at him evenly. “You are familiar with my methods.”

“So you have switched allegiances so thoroughly that now you will spy for your enemy?” said Damen. 

Laurent held his gaze firmly. There was something acid in his tone when he spoke. “I roll over for the highest bidder.”

“How would I be able to trust the reports that you bring back?” said Damen. 

And that was how they ended up planning to sneak in to the Veretian camp together.

They formulated a sketch of a plan, still standing in the middle of Laurent’s confection of a tent, next to the book Laurent had set aside when Damen entered. Then Damen left Laurent alone again to his book, and turned outside.

Damen found Nikandros speaking with two of the other generals. It was late but all three of the men still wore their armor. Damen touched Nikandros gently on the shoulder. 

“Sire?” said Nikandros, turning Damen’s direction. 

“Hold on what we discussed earlier,” said Damen.

Nikandros raised an eyebrow.

“I will tell you if we are to proceed,” said Damen.

Nikandros nodded slowly. “Of course.”

Damen nodded back at him, and returned to his own tent. It was already late in the evening, the moon high in the sky. The sounds of the night blended with the sounds of the camp, men’s soft voices drifting from inside a tent, the drone of insects from off by the well. Lykaios had left out a copper basin of water and a towel for Damen, and he washed his face, slowly, and then dried it with the other side of the towel, and set the towel down again next to the basin.

The temporary peace of Damen’s evening was broken by his brother. Kastor burst into his tent. He was angry; his feelings were written clearly on his face. “I did not think you so easily diverted, Brother,” said Kastor. There was no affection in his tone. “Have you become so soft that a single fuck can turn your head from everything we have worked for?”

“Father cautioned both of us against being rash,” said Damen. It had been the most frequent criticism Theomedes had laid against the two of them over the years. Damen could almost hear his father’s voice again, the tone he would use after the two of them were discovered in yet another mishap, the gruff way he would lecture and bemoan how neither of them ever seemed to think. _Someday Kastor will run headlong off of a cliff in to the sea,_ Theomedes had told Damen once, _and you will follow him, and your only explanation to the sea gods as to why will be that your brother went ahead of you._

This had not seemed that great a fault to Damen at the time his father had spoken the words.

“Is he a good fuck, at least?” said Kastor. “I heard his own guard talking and half of them are hot to have him.”

“You are drunk,” said Damen. “Sleep it off. We can talk again in the morning.”

“I’m sick of talking,” said Kastor, but he retreated from Damen’s tent under Damen’s tired gaze, and Damen was alone again. 

 

In the morning, Damen met Laurent by the horses. Laurent had his own horse already saddled. She was a fine horse, Damen observed, with an arched neck, powerful shoulders, strong hindquarters, and a low-set tail. Damen took the reins for his own horse from one of his grooms, inspected to see that he was saddled to his satisfaction, and mounted.

Laurent led the way. They rode close slowly as they picked their way out of the camp. “We are not going to don dresses and pretend to be women,” said Damen, as they departed.

Laurent gave him a sidelong look. “You would not make a convincing woman.”

They were not particularly attempting to disguise themselves at all. Laurent had pointed out the evening before that no contrivance they could come up with was any more plausible than the idea that Laurent had simply decided to show off the luxuries of the Veretian tent palace to his new husband. So they left the Akielon camp without comment, made their way across the valley, and entered the Veretian camp without giving any other explanations.

It was not necessary to sneak into the Veretian tent palace. Laurent simply walked in one of the side doors, his shoulders set in a posture that suggested that the entire palace might belong to him. Damen realized after a moment that it probably did, and followed, trying not to look obvious and out of place. There was no sneaking until they approached the portions of the tent reserved for the Regent’s use. 

Then Laurent demonstrated his abilities at espionage. He led Damen in taking advantage of a distraction provided by one of the servants to slip past the Regent’s Guards, and then he pushed Damen behind a chaise and ducked in next to him when another set of men came walking down the hallway, talking amiably amongst themselves about what one of the chefs might do when she realized that they were short on pheasant.

Finally they arrived in a set of rooms that appeared as a study attached to a bedroom. The living quarters of the Regent of Vere when camping in a tent were more luxurious than Damen’s own keep in his home at Ios, and Damen stared for long moments at the elaborately carved wooden reading stand, a table with several books, scattered correspondence, and the Regent’s seal.

Laurent did not seem intimidated by the furnishings; he moved familiarly around the space, glancing at the papers on the reading stand before seeming to dismiss them from his notice, sorting through papers spread out on the desk as though inspecting to see if any of them happened to be of interest.

Laurent looked up suddenly, and Damen thought perhaps he had found something. He opened his mouth to ask, but Laurent gestured quickly at him to be silent. Laurent had his head tilted to the side, as though listening, and then even Damen could hear the footsteps approaching their position, and Laurent was pushing him through the study and in to the bed chamber. 

The bed was also a Veretian monstrosity, wooden with four posters hanging up the bed curtains, which were heavy and a deep blue embroidered with the Regent’s emblem in gold. Laurent shoved Damen to the floor and had him half shoved underneath the bed skirt before Damen could even grasp that this was his plan, and Laurent crawled in after him, pressed up tightly against Damen in the confined and dark space underneath the bed. 

Damen could make out the shadow of Laurent’s body in the darkness, the cant of his head as he seemed to be listening intently to whatever was happening in the other room. But more than he could see Laurent, he could feel him, the warmth of Laurent’s leg where it pressed up against Damen’s thigh, the arm that Laurent had resting on Damen’s chest, the brush of Laurent’s hair against Damen’s shoulder.

They could hear voices in the other room, dimly, at first, and then more clearly as the men drew further into the study. One of the voices belonged to the Regent, Damen realized after a moment, recognizing the man’s tones from their discussions at the negotiating table during the peace summit. He almost had not recognized it right away; the man sounded different because he was speaking Akielon. 

“Coming here was a risk,” said the Regent. “You should be more cautious.”

The next voice was one that Damen had heard speak Akielon before, and he had no trouble recognizing it, but a great deal of difficulty believing what he heard. It was his brother. 

“He said war! But that ice prince has him all confused and turned around.” Kastor sounded angry; he sounded the same as he had the night before in Damen’s tent, frustrated that Damen had belayed his order to Nikandros. 

Laurent must have felt the tension in Damen’s body upon hearing his brother, or something of his incipient objection, because he moved his arm further up Damen’s chest and placed his hand over Damen’s lips warningly. Damen could feel the reflection of his own warm breath off of Laurent’s fingers.

“Patience,” the Regent said. “If he was so close to war, it will not be hard to get there again. And if he makes a fool of himself as a young man besotted, all the better. Your men will flock to you as a leader if he proves himself incapable.”

The Regent asked Kastor a question about a raid near Sicyon, and Damen listened, incredulous, as his brother recounted Damen’s position that a raid closer to the oasis was more likely to be successful, and how Timon was going to take up an offensive position a bit further to the west. 

Damen could still feel Laurent’s hand on his face. He shifted, slightly, to give himself a bit more space separate from Laurent, but Laurent rested a bit more weight on him as though to keep him in place and from wiggling around. Damen could see Laurent frowning at him in the dim light that filtered in through the slits of the bed skirt, but then Laurent’s eyes unfocused again, his attention turned outward.

Kastor was talking about Laurent. “I don’t know why this wedding is such a good idea anyway. It seems to just be distracting everyone from the plan.”

The Regent sounded unperturbed in the face of Kastor’s frustration. “Don’t worry about my nephew,” he said.

“I just think he’s starting to cause problems,” said Kastor stubbornly.

“If he causes a problem,” the Regent paused delicately. It was Damen’s turn to feel the tension within Laurent’s body, the prince seemed to be almost vibrating in the confined space beneath the bed. “Then I will take care of the problem.”


	9. Chapter 9

Laurent closed his eyes as he reacted to the Regent’s comment, the trembling in his body calming finally as a deliberate act of will.

In the study, the Regent dispatched with Kastor, telling him to go back to his own camp and await a messenger. Kastor grumbled, dissatisfied with the lack of action and also, Damen supposed, with the way he was forced to defer the Regent, the manner in which he had just been easily dismissed. They could hear Kastor’s footsteps as he departed the study.

There was an extended period of waiting. The Regent seemed to be working quietly alone in his own study. They could hear the rustling of papers from time to time, the settling of a man deeper into his chair. 

Damen became increasingly aware of Laurent’s body next to his own. He could feel the pace of Laurent’s breath by the press of Laurent’s ribcage against his own. Laurent’s breath was slow and steady, as though he were perfectly relaxed hiding under an elaborate Veretian bed listening to his family speak about treason in the next room. Damen wondered, with a tinge of hysteria, whether this was the sort of thing that Laurent did all of the time. Perhaps he was so experienced at espionage that this all seemed very tame, to him.

Laurent squirmed against Damen, suddenly, and Damen very desperately wanted to tell Laurent to stop moving while half on top of him. He clasped an arm around Laurent’s midsection, instead, exerting a firm pressure to urge Laurent to stay in place.

Both of them were suddenly distracted by a change in the noises in the other room. The Regent seemed to rise from his chair, and they heard his footsteps moving around the study. He seemed to be walking from his desk back to the reading stand, and then moving back to his desk again. The chair creaked as he sat down.

He seemed to work longer at his desk. Damen turned his head over to the left, but there was nothing to see in the other direction either, just the carved wood of the bed posts and the pleats of the bed skirt. 

They waited.

The Regent arose from his chair again. Damen could hear the slide of the chair against the ground as he moved it away and stood. He was moving across the room; they could hear his footsteps. The footsteps grew further and further away, and then they became even less distinct as the Regent left the study and moved into the hallway.

Laurent nodded at Damen, and then squirmed out from the under the bed first, half pushing himself and half rolling out from under the wooden frame of the bed and to the other side of the bed skirt. 

Laurent disappeared into the light of the bedroom, and Damen started the process of extricating his larger frame from under the bed as well. He had poked his head out when they heard a noise again in the study. Laurent looked over in alarm, then back down at Damen. The footsteps drew nearer again; there was someone within the study.

Laurent, better suited to espionage than Damen in all respects, sprung into action faster than Damen did, and gestured for Damen to retreat back under the bed, pushing Damen along by kicking him with his foot until Damen drew all of his limbs back behind the bed skirt. 

He waited for a moment expecting Laurent to crawl back beneath with him also, but Laurent did not seem to be moving. Damen could see Laurent’s boots and the distorted shadow of Laurent’s appearance against the floor. 

“Is someone there?” the Regent called in to the bedroom.

Damen at first expected Laurent to answer – he had a moment of wondering if maybe Laurent’s statement at rolling over for the highest bidder was accurate after all, and Laurent was about to reveal Damen to his uncle under the bed.

But Laurent did not call back to his uncle. He was leaning on the bed, Damen could hear it creaking above him, and humming to himself, in the manner of one who has had several glasses too much to drink.

The Regent’s footsteps came closer; he entered the bedroom. “Nephew,” he said, sounding mildly surprised. 

Laurent half-rolled, half-turned around, still leaning heavily on the bed, and moving again with the slow and listing movements of a drunk. “Uncle,” Laurent mumbled, and if Damen had not spent the last hours with Laurent and known him to be completely sober, he would have sworn that Laurent had been drinking.

“I’ve told you that you are not supposed to be here,” the Regent said mildly. He sounded as a parent scolding a child; not a man confronting a spy.

“I was looking for you,” said Laurent, slurring a little, his Veretian words still managing to sound oddly precise in his characteristic way of speaking. 

“You are too old for this nonsense,” said the Regent. He came closer to Laurent. Damen could see their feet positioned together on the floor. They were close enough to touch.

“Why do you not love me anymore,” Laurent said, ostensibly to his uncle, though the words seemed to be pressed into the bedclothes.

The Regent moved even closer to his nephew, one of his boots touched Laurent’s in the limited field of Damen’s vision. Damen could not imagine standing so close to the one you had heard only a few minutes before calmly planning your own demise.

“You are a man now,” said the Regent, speaking to his nephew as any parent might to a reluctant child. Damen could hear them moving above him, and a sound that might have been the Regent stroking Laurent’s hair. “You are married even.”

Laurent said something that sounded muffled and unhappy, as though his face were still pressed in to the bed.

“What’s that?” the Regent asked, sounding almost fond. 

Laurent repeated himself, though most of his words were still unintelligible. Damen could make out something about a barbarian. 

“Is he very lacking in culture?” said the Regent. 

There was a period of quiet between uncle and nephew. Damen felt as though he could not breathe. He wondered if he should just come out from under the bed. He wasn’t armed, and the awkwardness of coming out from under the bed would be a significant disadvantage. But the Regent was an older man, and not likely to be as skilled at fighting at Damen. 

Laurent was giving a masterful performance of a drunken, spoiled child. He gave a half-hitching breath. “He’s Akielon,” said Laurent, sounding accusatory.

The Regent gave a soft laugh. “Does he take you often, then?” said the Regent. “I have heard they do nothing but fight and fuck.”

Laurent was mumbling again into the bedclothes.

The Regent continued after a moment, his tone more that of a man speaking contemplatively to himself, not as though he were carrying on a conversation with his nephew. “He must split you open,” he said, slowly, musingly, sounding as though the idea were not displeasing to him. “I do wish I could have seen that.”

“I want to go home,” said Laurent. His voice was nasally and still slurred.

The Regent made a considering noise, and he stepped away from Laurent after a moment. Damen could see his feet as he moved across the room. He might have been contributing to holding Laurent up, for Laurent’s weight seemed to fall more heavily on the bed as the Regent moved away.

Damen followed his steps to the far end of the room where he seemed to take something out of a chest, and then back to another corner, and then he approached the bed again. Damen could see his feet moving closer and closer, until he stood just next to Laurent again.

“Here,” said the Regent, and he must have been holding something up to Laurent. “You need to drink this.”

“No,” said Laurent, sounding petulant.

“Yes,” said the Regent. Damen wondered what it was, suddenly. Was it poison? Was this the way that the Regent would take care of the problem of his troublesome nephew? But Laurent was not actually drunk, surely he could not be forced to drink something if he were truly unwilling. And Laurent knew that Damen was under the bed, if he needed assistance he would give some sort of signal--

“Don’t want to,” Laurent slurred.

“We can’t chance you remembering this when you sober up, can we?” said the Regent. 

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” said Laurent.

“This will make you feel better,” said the Regent, coaxingly “Drink it all up now, that’s good.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trying to make up for yesterday's short (and rather depressing) chapter by posting another short chapter this morning before I head to work. I can't believe there are 47 pages to this story I started only 7 days ago.... :/

Damen felt as though he were held in place underneath the bed frame, bound to the posters by the confidence in Laurent’s voice when he had told Damen to hide again and remained himself out in the open.

The Regent seemed to be walking Laurent now toward the door. Their boots moved together across the floor of the tent. The Regent’s steps were even and slow; Laurent’s steps were uneven. He stumbled, once. Damen wondered if this were more of Laurent’s acting skills, or if whatever his uncle had had him drink was already taking effect. 

Laurent was allowing himself to be led out of the bedroom without protest. Their footsteps continued as the crossed the study and moved into the hallway beyond.

Damen waited for a moment in the silence before he pulled himself out from under the bed, lifting the bed skirt first to look, and then awkwardly extricating himself from underneath the frame.

He paused for a moment once he was standing, taking in the room again and considering his options. There was an empty goblet on a side table. Damen clenched his fists.

He had not yet decided in his head, as he retraced the steps he and Laurent had taken to find the Regent’s study, whether he was searching out Laurent – and if so, what he was going to do when he found him – or whether he was trying to escape back to the relative safety of the Akielon camp, where apparently only some members of the camp were plotting against him.

The choice was made for him by not knowing where Laurent was or having any idea how to locate him, so he made his way through the hallways again, and out the side door to where they had left the horses. 

He passed only a couple of distracted and busy servants as he made his way out; no one questioned him as he made his way through the elaborate tent.

Damen mounted his horse and started to guide the animal out of the Veretian encampment.

He was very near to the edge, close enough that he had begun to think that his escape would work, when he heard a voice call out behind him. 

“King Damianos.” It was the Regent.

Damen turned his horse around. The Regent stood amidst a handful of his own guard. One of his guards was propping up a listing Laurent; Laurent seemed to be having a great deal of trouble holding his head up or making his eyes focus.

“What brings you to our encampment?” said the Regent, sounding cordial.

Damen’s hand itched for a sword. He nodded toward Laurent. “I was worried I had misplaced something.”

The Regent nodded understandingly. “I was just sending him back to you.” He turned toward his nephew with a small frown, a perfect imitation of a father disappointed in an errant son. “I am not sure he can sit a horse.”

“I’ll manage,” said Damen, and one of the guards helped him to pull Laurent up to sit behind him on his horse. Laurent wrapped his arms around Damen’s middle and did not seem in immediate danger of falling off. 

“How are you finding married life, then?” said the Regent. There was nothing in his tone that indicated the question was anything other than a pleasantry, but the Regent’s words from earlier in the day replayed themselves continuously in Damen’s head.

“It is teaching me a great deal about Veretian customs,” said Damen. He thought back to kneeling at his father’s bedside, and his father’s cautions that Veretians were not to be trusted.

“I’m sure it is,” said the Regent.

Damen could not bear to make false small talk any longer. He placed a hand of his own on Laurent’s arms around his chest to keep Laurent secure, and signaled his horse and took them out of the camp.

Once they were far enough out of earshot of the Veretian encampment, Damen craned his head and tried to speak to Laurent.

“Laurent. Are you all right?”

Laurent rubbed his face sleepily against Damen’s back. “I feel sick.”

“Do you know what it was?”

Laurent made an unintelligible noise.

Damen kept riding. The weather was pleasant; the afternoon sun was warm and there was a pleasant breeze in the valley.

When they arrived amidst the Akielon encampment, Damen sent one of the guards for one of the physicians, and told the man to have the physician meet them at his tent.

Another guard was needed to help ease Laurent off of the horse. He seemed less capable of holding himself up now than he had been when they had left the Veretian tents, and almost toppled to the ground before Damen caught him by the shoulder.

“Too much to drink?” said the guard who was helping Damen, not without sympathy.

“Something like that,” said Damen, and then he simply picked Laurent up to take him in to the tent, and eased him down on to the bedroll. 

The physician arrived. He placed his fingers at Laurent’s throat and felt for his pulse, lowered his face close to Laurent’s own and felt his breath. He used a gentle finger to lift one after another of Laurent’s eyelids and inspect his pupils. 

“He is very drunk,” said the physician finally.

“He was poisoned,” said Damen.

The physician nodded, taking in this information. “Do you know what the poison was?”

Damen shook his head grimly.

“It seems to have effects similar to too much drink,” said the physician. “He will sleep it off. When he wakes up, it will not be pleasant.”

Their discussion about Laurent was interrupted by Laurent stirring, and then convulsing to the side and vomiting, which the physician pronounced as very good. Damen called out to the guards to send in one of the slaves to help them clean up.

“He will recover,” said Damen.

“Yes,” said the physician. 

Lykaios came in to the tent with several towels. She placed a damp cloth on Laurent’s forehead, and then she began to clean up where he had been sick.

Damen placed a hand on the physician’s arm as the man got up to leave. “Are there poisons that would cause a man to forget things?”

The physician thought for a moment, the corners of his mouth turning down. “Yes,” he said finally. “That can be a consequence even of too much drink. There are probably many men in the encampment who have a couple of nights they do not remember clearly for that reason.”

“I mean poisons besides drink,” said Damen. 

“I have heard of certain herbs,” the physician offered. He paused. He seemed slightly uncomfortable. “Is your highness seeking such a poison?”

Damen looked up sharply. “What?” he realized what was being asked. “No, no. You’re dismissed.”

The physician nodded and left the tent.


	11. Chapter 11

Damen sat next to Laurent for a while. Lykaios cleaned the tent, refreshed the towel on Laurent’s forehead, offered to help Damen undress, and then exited the tent herself gracefully.

It had not been that long since Damen had sat next to a different sick bed. It had been different with Theomedes. His father had already been ailing for months by the time that he had taken permanently to his bed, and so as Damen sat vigil at his side he was already a wasted man, a thin shadow of his former self. Damen did not like to remember him as he had been in those last days, nor did Damen think that was how his father wished to be remembered. Damen tried to think of him instead as he had been in the years before, the strong man of Damen’s youth who showed him how to hunt, the commander who stood beside him as they led their men to war.

Laurent did not appear sick. The towel had fallen off of his head and he seemed, lying on the bedroll, as a young man simply asleep. His features were well formed and relaxed in sleep; his face had color and not the sallow pale of illness. He breathed evenly and deeply without seeming to have any distress.

Nikandros entered the tent quietly and signaled to Damen. Damen stood and followed Nikandros to the other end of the tent. They spoke in low tones to avoid disturbing Laurent.

“Your highness,” said Nikandros. “I did not wish to interrupt, but there is some question amongst the generals as to your plans for war.”

“There will be war,” said Damen softly.

“Shall we send the declaration,” said Nikandros.

“There is another thing I must do, first,” said Damen.

And Nikandros was an old enough friend that he did not ask what it was, hearing in the tone of Damen’s voice enough of his intent, and he simply nodded and left Damen alone.

Damen sat down next to Laurent for another long moment. Laurent might have been dreaming; his breath was slightly uneven now and Damen could see his eyes moving behind his eyelids. Damen almost reached out to touch him – meaning to sooth, with a hand on his shoulder – and then thought on it again and pulled his hand away.

He donned his armor, checking over the pieces first for any weaknesses or wear, and then putting them on carefully. He prepared his weapons, looking over his sword as his father had taught him, holding the blade up in the light of one of the torches and staring down the blade for nicks. He took a dagger at his belt. 

Damen left the tent. 

He found several members of Laurent’s personal guard on watch near Laurent’s tent, and fetched them to stand watch over Damen’s tent and the sleeping prince instead.

Then he sought out his brother.

Kastor was playing dice with some other men around a campfire. From the sound of Kastor’s laughter his luck was good and he was winning.

“Brother,” said Damen.

“Not now,” said Kastor. “I am on a streak; Timon will owe me his horse.”

“I call you out,” said Damen, speaking the traditional words.

Kastor turned from the fire and the game to look at Damen. The rest of the game came to a stop and the men’s talk stopped, watching. The dice fell on the ground as an even match.

“What?” said Kastor. No one else dared to say anything.

“I call you out. I name you traitor to our people and our father, and I invite you to face me here, with these men as witnesses.”

Kastor appeared dumfounded, he looked at Damen with his mouth open for a moment, then turned to the men around the fire, looking at each of them one by one, and as he looked at each they each turned their gaze to the ground in turn. Kastor looked at Damen again.

There was already a ring set up in the encampment. Men had been using it throughout the summit to practice for the tournament games or to keep in practice. Damen waited while Kastor took up his own weapons and put on his own armor. 

Kastor’s luck turned.

They had fought many times before. They were brothers. They had fought as boys, even when Damen had been very small and Kastor tended to end their fights by throwing Damen into one of the horse troughs. They had fought as young men. In practice and in fun, against each other in matches as the Akielons held their annual games and established the ranking. They had fought beside each other on the border. Damen had thought they would do that again here.

They crossed swords. Kastor was good. Damen was better. 

Kastor was hasty; he struck blows that left him unprotected when it would have been wiser to wait. He stepped forward and retaliated out of anger when a level-headed man might have stepped back.

Damen won.

He stood alone in the ring afterwards, staring off at the horizon. The red sun had lowered and dipped beyond the edge while they had been fighting. The field held only the remnants of the light. Damen felt the loss of his brother somehow more keenly even than he had felt the loss of his father. Because he had seen Theomedes death coming, perhaps? Because he had always known that at some point his father would die and Damen would be expected to carry on his legacy? And yet he had always thought that Kastor would be at his side.

Damen left the ring, finally. There was a circle of men watching, now. The men who had been sitting with Kastor were there, silent, but others from the camp had come as well, standing watch quietly on the side of the ring, now standing as a quiet vigil in the dusk. Nikandros had come and was watching as well.

Damen caught Nikandros’s eye as he exited the ring, unbuckling his vambrace. “He is to be buried with honors,” said Damen. One of the men standing by made a noise of surprise. It was not how things were done. Traitors were customarily denied the honors of a ritual burial, the bodies burned instead and the families given only the ashes. Damen looked the men in the eye and let his gaze travel down the line, watching again as the men’s eyes fell from meeting his own to look at the ground, as they had done for his brother earlier in the evening. 

“With honors,” Damen said, and he left.

A little ways off from the ring, not standing in the circle of men surrounding the fence but still close enough that he would have a view of what happened, Damen caught sight of Laurent.

He stood out, even in the dim light. His bright yellow hair was unusual in the Akielon camp and something of a beacon, the propriety of his tightly laced Veretian clothes also setting him apart from the others.

Damen approached him and stood in front of him. Laurent was standing up straight without assistance.

“I see some events have transpired while I apparently decided to get drunk,” said Laurent, and the tone of his voice was barbed but his words were clearly spoken.

“I did not expect to see you yet tonight,” said Damen. Laurent must have had enviable stamina and self control to have pulled himself off of the bedroll and across the camp to watch the fight.

“Should I ask what happened earlier today?” said Laurent.

Damen blanched; his expression must have revealed how unprepared he was to answer that question. His mouth was open but he could not find any words.

Laurent seemed to take this as something of an answer. His gaze moved off of Damen and back on to the ring behind Damen. Some of the men were moving Kastor’s body off of the field. “If it’s any consolation,” said Laurent, “I am sure it is nothing that has not happened to me before.”

Damen closed his eyes and opened them again. “It is not any consolation.” He wanted to apologize to Laurent. He was still having trouble finding words. “Laurent—" he started. He trailed off. Laurent still seemed focused on the field behind him.

“There is something,” said Laurent, “about how you moved, in the ring.” Laurent met Damen’s eyes again. “It reminds me of my brother Auguste.”

“Auguste was a good fighter,” said Damen. “I saw him at the last summit; I admired him very much.”

“And yet you had him ambushed with an arrow to the back rather than meet him on the field as you did your own brother,” said Laurent. His tone was even.

“What?” Damen felt as though he had sustained more blows in this conversation with Laurent than he had during the entire fight with Kastor.

Laurent looked at him sharply. “You deny it was an Akielon arrow that killed him?”

A hundred denials came to Damen’s lips and then fled unformed. He breathed slowly and then formed his statement more slowly.

“I mourned your brother’s death when I heard of it,” said Damen. “He was a fine man. I looked forward to summits such as this where I might sit across him at the table. I do not know what killed him, but I had no hand in planning it.”

Laurent was watching him closely, inspecting his face as though he could discern Damen’s honesty in his features. Damen hoped that he could; he let the plainness of his words stand. 

“It is going to come to war,” said Damen.

Laurent remained silent; he was still watching Damen with that piercing gaze. 

“There are things that are worth fighting for. This is one of them.”

“Are you certain that it is worth the cost?” said Laurent.

“There are things which a man must do because to live another way would be dishonorable,” said Damen. He took off his other vambrace and held them each in his hand, awkwardly.

Laurent looked down at the ground. “You are right. I was not thinking of it as a war.”

“It is one,” said Damen. “And I hope to count you as an ally in it.”

Laurent looked up again. “Yes.”


	12. Chapter 12

Damen offered Laurent assistance back to his tent, holding out an arm hesitantly if Laurent needed a balance. Laurent declined. Damen walked alongside of him anyway. Laurent walked slowly but steadily. Damen timed his steps to Laurent’s. 

They walked in silence to the front of Laurent’s tent. Damen nodded at the members of the Prince’s Guard who were standing watch.

“Good night,” he said to Laurent.

Laurent stood in front of his tent. His head turned toward Damen. He seemed to be waiting.

Damen paused, for a moment, in case Laurent might say something. Laurent did not speak, and then Damen nodded his good night again and left for his own tent.

The moon had risen. Light reflected in the sky off of some of the clouds, as though the sky were lit by a white glow. One of the clouds resembled a ship on the ocean, and Damen wished for a moment that he were at his home in Ios watching a ship come in to the harbor, far the battlefield in Sicyon, far from the Veretian encampment and the Veretian prince and the ring where Kastor’s body had fell. He regarded the cloud again and it did not seem so much like a ship any longer.

Lykaios helped him to strip out of the rest of his armor. Damen sat on a stool and closed his eyes while she wiped his face with a small towel. She turned next to his hands, lifting one after another into her own, wiping them carefully with the towel, and setting them down again.

“Would it please your highness for me to stay?” Lykaios asked after her service was finished. Her eyes were respectfully cast down toward the floor of the tent. Damen realized, suddenly, that though Lykaios had been a favorite of his for several years, that he could not have said what color her eyes were.

“You can go,” Damen said gently.

She curtseyed prettily and departed, taking along with her the towels for washing and the small copper basin.

Damen sat for a long moment on the stool. He looked around the tent, suddenly furious. He felt that he had just arrived and set up this tent on the border, and in the same moment he felt as though he had been in the tent an interminable amount of time. The table in the side of the tent was still set with maps and the tiny wooden soldiers arranged in a false pattern intended to confuse a spy. Damen had simply been wrong all along as to who the spy was. 

He stood up off of the stool, took two steps toward the table, and before he realized he had toppled it over, the tiny soldiers and horses falling on to the floor of the tent and the map floating off the table more slowly to cover them.

Damen succumbed to sleep only because he was exhausted.

He woke to the sound of steel drawing from the sheath. His hand was on his knife before he was even completely awake, and he rolled to the side to avoid a strike at his neck and managed to knock over one of his attackers in the same movement. 

There were four men in the small tent with weapons drawn; they were almost tripping all over each other. 

They were dressed as Akielons; their weapons were Akielon. Damen did not recognize them. He disarmed one of the men.

“He isn’t here,” one of them said to another, and in contrast with his clothing he spoke Veretian.

The commotion alerted Damen’s guards, and more men with weapons drawn poured in to the tent; these at least were men that Damen recognized.

The strange men were disarmed and bound, Damen’s guards standing watch over them like a dog watching over a henhouse. Other guards moved around the tent righting things that had been disrupted in the struggle. One of them picked up the table that had held the maps and started to pick up the map, Damen waved at him to stop.

Nikandros appeared, taking reports from the men on guard and calming the bustle.

“Why did they attack?” Nikandros asked the captain of the guards.

“Perhaps they were allied with Lord Kastor,” said the captain, darting a look at Damen before he turned his eyes back to Nikandros.

Nikandros nodded, it was a reasonable answer.

“No,” said Damen.

Nikandros and the captain turned to face Damen. He had been standing in one corner of the tent.

“They are not Akielon,” said Damen. “And I do not believe I was their target.”

Suddenly he realized that the target could still be at risk, and he ran out of his own tent and across the encampment toward Laurent’s distinctive tent, several of the guard following behind him.

He could see in his mind the worst, the tent in flames, Laurent stabbed in and lying in a pool of his own blood.

But the tent was perfectly quiet when he arrived in front of it. The colored pennant on the top fluttered happily in the breeze. Laurent’s guards were alert and stood at attention upon Damen’s approach.

“What’s going on?” one of them asked, in passable Akielon.

Damen ignored the question and pushed past the two guards to enter the tent. 

There was peace inside the tent, as well. Laurent was sleeping. The furnishings of his tent were not disrupted, there were no intruders standing over his bed. He stirred at the noise of Damen’s entry and came awake smoothly, rising to a half-seated position. 

“You are all right,” said Damen.

“Yes,” said Laurent.

Laurent’s guards came into the tent behind Damen.

“Your highness,” one of the men said. “He rushed past us—"

“It’s all right, Jord,” said Laurent. The guards retreated again to stand watch.

“There was an attack,” said Damen after a moment. Laurent sat up fully. 

“Aimed at me,” said Laurent.

Damen nodded.

Laurent was about to say something more, when they heard the war trumpet blow the signal that they were being attacked.


	13. Chapter 13

The camp erupted with movement. There was a dog barking. Men streamed out of the tents helping one another fasten on pieces of armor. Laurent followed Damen out of the tent and regarded the action.

One of the squires came up to Damen with his own pieces of armor. It had not been that many hours since he removed them, and he accepted them back. He turned to Laurent. “You should retreat with your guard.”

“Retreat,” said Laurent, his tone sounding vaguely offended. “It is as much my war as it is yours.” And to Damen’s surprise, he was suddenly turning to one of his own guards – Damen remembered it was the one Laurent had called Jord – and accepting a breastplate and weapons of his own.

There was no further time to argue. Another man brought Damen’s horse, and he left to rendezvous with the generals.

Nikandros briefed him on the attack, on the army the scouts had spotted on their flank, and on the movement of the troops he had directed. Damen nodded. “Was there a declaration?”

Nikandros nodded. Laurent had located his own horse and rode up beside Damen. Nikandros looked at Laurent, and then back at Damen. “The reason for the attack is the murder of the Prince Laurent.”

Damen looked at Laurent helplessly at this news. Laurent merely raised an eyebrow. “I am not as dead as seems popularly believed.”

The sun rose just as Damen rode out on to the field next to the standard bearer to meet the army flanking them in the rear with Timon’s troops. The battle was a clash of noise, metal hitting metal, the groans and shouts of men, the hooves of the horses hitting the ground. 

Damen lost his horse and was fighting on foot, instead, his sword in his hand. He saw a Veretian rider approach from the corner of his eyes, and he whirled to the left with his sword raised to face him, only to realize that it was Laurent. Laurent was riding and leading a second horse and he untied the lead and threw it to Damen, who mounted again and nodded his thanks before they were both off in the melee again. 

The first wave of the battle had finished by the time the sun rose high enough in the sky to peak above the top of the trees that lined the horizon.

The second wave of the battle was preempted before it might have even begun. Upon discovering another contingent of the Veretian troop, Laurent simply signaled his own standard-bearer and rode out in front of the Veretians, shouted, “To me!” and then added the newly converted men to augment his own guard. He acted throughout with calm confidence, as though there had never been any chance of this plan going terribly wrong and him dying at the front of a charge or as his brother with an arrow to the back. The Veretians who joined seemed pleased that their prince was not dead.

The third wave of the battle was fought amongst the encampment. Riders reared up in the spaces between canvas tents. Several of the tents were knocked down, and canvas blew across the field and became trodden under the horses hooves and the men’s boots.

Damen lost his second horse. The animal was so frightened by a tent piece that flew up off of the ground in front of her that she reared and neatly deposited Damen on the ground, winded. 

He continued fighting.

Damen found himself dizzied when he was struck by a blow to the head, a man having emerged from a tent behind him and hit him before Damen realized that he was there. Dazed, Damen was pulled in to the tent and pushed to his knees, One man held his right arm and twisted his wrist until he dropped his sword, another held his left arm behind his back and held a knife at his throat. 

Damen raised his eyes, careful not to move his throat too close to the knife. The Regent stood across from him. The Regent smiled. 

“You have proven a more worthy opponent than I anticipated,” said the Regent. 

Damen spat at him. The man with the knife at his throat tightened his grip, the tip of the knife scraping at the skin.

“And feisty,” said the Regent, still seeming pleased. “I am almost sad that we will have no further matches against each other.” His eyes left Damen’s face and traveled to the man holding the knife. “Kill him.”

Damen struggled, leaning backwards and causing the two men holding him to swear and have to tighten their grips.

And then, just when he thought it was over, another man burst in to the tent. It was Laurent; Damen recognized him first by the pale hair. He was not carrying a sword, though he had something in his hand, and by the time Damen recognized it as a throwing knife Laurent had already moved, and Damen’s gaze flipped back to the Regent to see the man’s hands at his throat around the knife, a look of surprise on his face. He fell to the floor.

Damen struggled, again, and managed to evade the hold of one of the men. Laurent assisted in dispatching with the other by knocking him out with a shield.

“You’re not dead,” said the first man, the one who had held the knife to Damen’s throat. “He said he killed you.”

“I am not dead,” said Laurent. “I am your prince. You should be kneeling.”

The man did.

Damen was still on his knees from having been forced their earlier. Laurent came up to him and offered him a hand. Damen accepted it and rose to his feet again. On his knees, he had to look up into Laurent’s face. Standing, he was almost a head taller than Laurent, and this close together, he had to tilt his head down to see Laurent’s features.

“Thank you,” said Damen.

Laurent canted his head to the side, slightly. “We are allies, yes?”

They were.

 

The revelation that the Regent was dead, and perhaps just as importantly, that Laurent was not in fact dead, ended the remaining fighting relatively quickly. 

The men turned to the sober tasks and celebration that followed a battle, helping those wounded to the physician’s tents, righting the tents that had been upended in the fighting, gathering the horses and the animals back into the paddock. Men began to drink, to sing war songs amongst themselves as they worked and rested, but there was an air of uncertainty amongst them. For there had been fighting, and the fighting was now ended, but who had won? Both the Akielons and the Veretians on either side of the valley seemed to consider themselves the victors.

There were still things to be settled – hard feelings along the border had not been magically soothed – but in contrast to the painful slowness of deliberations that Damen remembered from the start of the peace summit, things seemed now to move at an extremely rapid pace. It seemed that every time Damen turned his head, something else was settled, another petitioner departing pleased, a dispute resolved, always Laurent standing calmly at the center of it.

Damen found Laurent overseeing the dismantling of the Veretian tent palace. Cloth decorated to look like stones and colorful stained glass was being rolled up by servants and loaded on to wagons, the wooden framing that had sustained it all taken to the ground and chopped for kindling, the elaborate furnishings wrapped in cloth and loaded back into other wagons to be returned to their permanent homes.

Laurent was busy talking with three different men as Damen approached, and Damen stood a ways off to let him finish. He saw Laurent look up and spot him, and he nodded, but waited, content to let his eyes linger on Laurent in the sunlight as he worked.

Laurent came over once had given the men their instructions. Damen smiled at him as he approached, and Laurent gave a small smile back, tentatively.

“King Laurent,” Damen greeted him. “It has a pleasant ring to it, does it not?”

“It does,” said Laurent, sounding wry. “But I am not the king.”

“No?” said Damen. He knew that the Veretians had complicated rules about inheritance of titles, but he was not familiar with all of them. And there were no other members of Laurent’s family left. “Is there a new Regent, then?”

Laurent looked at him, with that pensive gaze that he sometimes had. Damen was beginning to recognize some of his expressions. “There is,” said Laurent.

Damen wondered if he was going to have to coax all of the words out of Laurent’s mouth. “And so?” 

Laurent was beginning to smile again; he looked fond. “You truly don’t know.”

“Know what?” said Damen, beginning to feel impatient, as though a joke were coming like the crest of a wave, and he was standing dry on the shore waiting for it to hit him.

“If there is a married heir who had not yet reached the age to inherit, the Regency goes to his spouse,” said Laurent. “So – the new Regent of Vere is you.”

“No.”

Laurent nodded, the smile still teasing at the corners of his mouth.

“No,” said Damen. “This is not a funny joke.”

Laurent was smiling more broadly. “I am actually finding the irony quite amusing, myself.”

“I am not going to be the Regent of Vere,” said Damen.

“The title was already bestowed yesterday,” said Laurent. “I will do all of the work, if that is a comfort.”

Damen glared at him, and Laurent’s eyes crinkled, and then he made a sound that he would likely deny but that could only be defined as a giggle, and then he was laughing more broadly, and Damen could not sustain his glare any longer. 

A wagon loaded with bolts of tent silk rumbled past them. The sun shown on Laurent’s hair; it was gold in the light. Damen felt for him a burst of affection in his chest, and he joined in the laughter.

They laughed until they were tired, and then Damen sat down on the grass and watched yet another wagon, this one packed precariously with furniture, drive past on its way back to a Veretian keep. Laurent plopped down next to him, his posture less contained than it usually was and his expression oddly young.

“I will be glad to put Marlas behind me,” said Damen finally.

Laurent picked up a handful of grass and let it fall through his fingers in the air. “It has not been all bad,” he said. “You have a new country now, after all.”

Damen looked at him sidelong. “This marriage seems to have a lot of strings attached.”

Laurent smiled. “You are just not familiar with Veretian custom. You will learn with time.” It was almost kind of him, but then he continued, moving closer to Damen on the grass. “Tonight I will tell you of the Veretian traditions about collecting marital rights.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness! 10 days and 23,000 words and this adventure has finally finished. Thank you so much to everyone who joined me in reading over the last few days as this idea ate my brain. I don't think I would have made it so far without you!
> 
> For those who might be disappointed that there was less Damen/Laurent sex in this story than one might hope, I will confess that I might possibly be outlining a sequel of vignettes along those lines.... no promises, but I can't bring myself to entirely let these two go!


End file.
